


destinations

by pencilpal



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Pining, Post-Canon, Road Trips, Slow Burn, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 20:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21003581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pencilpal/pseuds/pencilpal
Summary: “Let’s get away, angel.”“Away?”“You and me and the Bentley, out from the city, out of the country. Let's see the world. Let’s go on a road trip, angel. Let’s find- find whatever this” he gestures at them both with wild, manic hands, “is.”And so, the next morning, they’re driving down the M2 towards ‘there’, wherever there might be.A journey through the destinations after the apocalypse never decided to wake up from it’s sleep.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a blast contributing and taking part of The GO Mini Bang <3 
> 
> Thanks to [Wanderingsilvan](https://wanderingsilvan.tumblr.com/) for the wonderful art contributed to the fic, be sure to check em' out <3

  
[By Wanderingsilvan](https://wanderingsilvan.tumblr.com/)  


* * *

There’s a small cottage by the sea. With unruly vines climbing up the old stone walls, and a withering veranda with crooked half-rotten planks and an overgrown garden with a wilted apple tree and a dead crow buried below the ground. It waits, patiently.

* * *

There’s an unhurried motion with his slightly hummus-stained hand, past the ceramic dish which is almost empty with only a few almonds left within it, and it reaches for the flatbreads wrapped carefully in linen cloth, placed within a woven basket. The golden bread is comfortably warm against his fingers as he with a careful hand slowly rips away a piece. It's soft and pillowy, a tender fragrance that recalls old memories where the bread wouldn't have been cooked in the haste of a busy kitchen, but prepared beside the fire with the intention to survive and if they were lucky, paired with the most delightful dates. Part of him misses it, with the world left to be discovered, and the simplicity of most humans with an admirable focus on simply surviving.

He dips the flatbread in the hummus with care and then takes a slow bite, savouring the rich taste of the hummus with the delightful flatbread. The food is utterly marvelous, intense flavours that play with each other, and while the tangy flavour of the hummus and the just-charred aftertaste of the flatbread that might be a little too much on their own, together they're a powerful explosion of character. A light hum as he grabs another bite, and he savours the wonderful culinary arts laid out in front of him.

As well, almost laid out in front of him is Crowley. The demon has never taken the time to learn how to sit upright, so he’s slouching in the seat. For someone possessing a wholly human body it would have been extremely uncomfortable, if not impossible, pose to sit within. Of course, Crowley wasn't human and his body wasn't limited to the foolish limitations of limbs. 

He’s watching, as he tends to do, yellow eyes hidden behind shades - a new pair since the Apocalypse didn’t happen, that are perhaps even more expensive than his last. Still round, but with golden detailing. Crowley wasn’t a materialistic guy, he didn’t hoard or cling like Aziraphale nor did he so much consume and devour as Aziraphale was doing, albeit with some dignity, right in front of him, but he enjoyed certain things. Once he found something he enjoyed, he adored it, loved it and perhaps odd for a demon, but not Crowley, he would cherish it. His Bentley, his plants and Aziraphale. The last one was still up for debate, but the Apocalypse had passed. There was time. 

Back to his newly purchased glasses, a few days after the Apocalypse, after dinner very similar to this, with Aziraphale enjoying food and Crowley a good glass of alcohol, he’d perhaps felt- well, he dressed the same, and, wasn’t this a new beginning - his happy ending? (although how it had gone so far, that might not be fully true but he refused to even think about it), and so, the sunglasses had been found in an unnamed designer store (and then miracled by his own) and well, they suited him. A new him. 

A slow sip of the rose wine (Lebanese) as Aziraphale finishes the flatbread, and wipes his fingers of a napkin, and delightfully reaches for a piece of the lahmacun with spiced lamb spread across the crisp bread, topped with a generous sprinkling of wild rocket. Just as he gingerly puts it upon his smaller plate, a satisfied smile across his face which Crowley is undoubtedly sated with, he glances up from the fragrant food and tilts his head at Crowley with a slight quirk to his brows.

“Oh, are you sure don’t want a piece, dear?” The smile softens as he gestures to the few dishes laid out, with a hopeful glance, and Crowley longs. Longs for tender sunlit mornings with indulgent breakfasts, to return home after a dinner not unlike this one and to talk with someone that isn’t his unruly plants. Before, there was hell and heaven, and now it’s just the two of them. He doesn’t know why it’s taking Aziraphale so long to catch up. 

“A glass of wine is enough for me, angel.” He doesn’t intend to sound dismissive, and as Aziraphale glances down at his almost-full plate and Crowley’s non-existent plate, his smile flickers and hesitantly, he taps his fingers against the table.

Crowley instantly regrets it.

“I’m sorry, oh.. that’s.. oh, that’s fine. Forget I asked..” Tentative and reluctant, that was the opposite of what Crowley desired. They’ve had uneasy dinners before, tension so thick that it had taken millenia for them to slowly melt the ice. Even though they had spent most of the past eleven years by each other's side, and even though they now had their own side (but what it was was still uncertain), and even though this was supposed to finally be their fairytale ending, there’s still water frozen and Crowley can sense, in right this moment, how it’s getting slowly thicker. He had to fix this.

“We could stay for desert.”

“Ah, well, I don’t want to take up your time. Oh, and I’m sure someone else is waiting on our table. I don’t want to be rude.” 

There’s the familiar (and unwanted) scrunching up of Aziraphale’s face, blue eyes glancing unsuredly away, and it’s not clear if there’s worry or exasperation in them. Adjusting his bow-tie and letting out a slight flustered sound, which isn’t the light hum as he savours the richness of chocolate souffle or the playful tone that he gets when feeling just sly enough to tease Crowley. It's taut and tight, with layers upon layers superglued together. He doesn’t know what it means, but from his skin feeling almost itchy (not dissimilar from when the rare times he’s had to shed, as a snake) and the lack of knowledge approaching not unlike ice throughout his body, he knows it isn’t good.

He didn’t fix it.

“Angel, you alwayss want desert.”

Crowley can’t help but flinch slightly at his unnecessarily petulant tone, because he doesn’t want to seem desperate. He wants, but he’s above getting onto his knees and begging Aziraphale to get over his silly little hangups and catch up to the finish line where Crowley is waiting. He’d like to think that he is patient, that it’s easy to wait on Aziraphale with open arms, but it’s been two whole weeks. Two weeks might seem insignificant to an immortal being, but it wasn’t just two weeks. Rather, it was thousands of years being on opposite sides, and the wall being torn down brick by brick. If Crowley wasn’t nice, he’d wanted it blown up centuries ago. 

Of course, the angel-part of the arrangement had a preposterous hangup on being loyal to the tug-of-war between heaven and hell, but it just happened that heaven and hell were gone from their own, much more friendly tug-of-war, so why was Aziraphale behaving as if they were acquaintances and they were here just to please Crowley’s silly wishes of a perfect world. If Aziraphale wanted to please him, they wouldn’t be here with a conservation so taut with tension as if they’d suddenly turned back the clock a couple of millennials. They would be somewhere where Crowley could hold Aziraphale’s hand, where his newly-purchased glasses could be removed with tender hands and where he could fall asleep to the comforting touch of tender fingers combing through his hair.

“But- but-” Aziraphale mumbles a couple of incomprehensible, desperate non-word words, and even an angel who is more well read than any single human in existence sometimes doesn’t know what to say. Right now, it’s thoughts and emotions that doesn’t have a communicable meaning attached to them, and it’s as if they’re salt stirred into water. He doesn’t have time to wait for the water to evaporate.

“But what?”

Crowley’s sunglasses has always acted like a shield. Right now, Aziraphale would like nothing more than to rip them away and to be able to comprehend what the demon wanted. Crowley rarely ate, and when he ate it was something salty that could be bought at the nearest Tesco, and both of them had wine at home, so why did Crowley want to stay? Aziraphale appreciated the courtesy, he really did, but even though the angel called himself more patient than most, he was tired of being doted upon. There was a reason he had once possessed a flaming sword, and he was certainly not made out of glass. 

Tender was nice. Slow was nice. This was neither slow or tender. It was Crowley for unknown reasons being docile and doting, and that was far away from Aziraphale wanted. Well, he didn’t quite know what he wanted but it wasn’t this. 

“Why do you want to stay? You’re.. you’re not eating, Crowley. It’s, well, awkward.” It was embarrassing, the way his words didn’t come out clear and coherent and he could feel his cheeks warm up (with anger or shame), and this was not a situation to be flustered. He can feel his bowtie against his throat, and the way it feels constricting - not unlike a snake slowly squeezing around his neck, and he reaches up and adjusts it with inept hands.

“I can drink wine, angel.” Of course Crowley could drink wine. In fact, Crowley was drinking wine right now - taking a long, slow (but not careful) sip while clutching the glass tightly in almost bone-white hands, a disguise to seem nonchalant. It was an excuse. Of course it was. An excuse to be here with Aziraphale. An excuse that wasn’t working, clearly. The demon knew (or thought he did) that the angel didn’t want to be here. He also knew that it wasn’t the location. Crowley hadn’t picked this restaurant (he didn’t, unless it was the Ritz). Aziraphale hadn’t been the one to knock on the door, and playfully ask, ‘Do you want to get dinner, angel?’ as if it wasn’t a routine, a tradition, a necessary part of both of their lives before and after the apocalypse. If he thought about it, it hadn’t been Aziraphale asking the past couple of times. It had been him. Did.. did Aziraphale 

Crowley knew he was foolish, but he wasn’t a complete idiot. He knew he couldn’t trust a fool.

“You have wine at home.” 

Crowley is almost enough of a fool (and a complete idiot) to let the words ‘But you’re not there.’ slither out of his mouth. Keyword being almost.

“If you want to leave, we can leave.” Better choice of words, a bad choice of tone. It’s hard to not bite his tongue and let out a flustered noise, because really, was there a purpose to sounding so dismissive? He was trying to be polite, not to build back up the wall he’d worked on for millenia to tear down. 

“Crowley, I never said I wanted to leave. It’s- well, it’s-” 

His hand touches gingerly his chin, and Aziraphale slowly adjusts his collar once again, as he with hesitance tilts his head up, watching Crowley who was now contorted in a taut position that couldn’t be comfortable, not even for the demon. He quickly glances away, with a stifled gulp, and his hand returns to being tightly clenched around the table.

“It’s peculiar being the only one eating. People will think I’m..” Wariness is clear within his apprehensive tone of voice, as he coughs lightly, glancing down at his lap, defeat slowly finding home within his dense bones. He didn’t want to upset Crowley.

“Well, certainly not an angel.” 

The chair slides across the floor, a razor-sharp sound that echoes through their silence, and Crowley doesn’t bother to push it in as he adjusts his sunglasses with a stiff hand, avoiding a single glance at the angel as he lets out a sharp laugh-like noise, biting his lip as he clenches his fist tighter and tighter, digging his nails into his skin which is slowly becoming less human and more reptile.

He can hear Aziraphale adjusting within his chair, and if Crowley was bothered by glancing at the angel seated unsettled within the chair, he’d see the dazed, glazed-over pale blue eyes watching him with what could only be read as heartbreak, he might have turned around, slid back into his seat, and reached for Aziraphale’s hand and asked what was bothering his angel.

It just happens that Crowley didn’t turn around, and none of that happened.

“Let’s go.” His tone is short, sharp, yet, there’s a clear attempt within it to sound somewhat polite. He fails miserably.

“You don’t want to cause a spectacle, don’t you, angel?” A word that’s usually said in a whimsical tone, a word that’s said with twitching corners of the mouth, and a tongue-in-cheek raised brow. There’s a raised brow, but it’s nowhere close to mischievous. It’s almost verging between hurtful and riled up. The tight-lipped line of his mouth doesn’t help, and while he’s standing with his hips laid-back and the idea that he possesses a human spine might be ridiculous, he does not come off as nonchalant or unruffled. Rather, it’s the opposite. He’s trying too hard, and it’s not working.

He never, ever wants to hear angel in that tone ever again.  
Aziraphale, who before had some semblance of cheer and comfort, is now sitting still, white hands clenched around the table as unnecessary breaths are heaved out at a glacial pace. 

When Aziraphale doesn’t respond and the only audible reaction Crowley can hear are uncharacteristic breaths, he can’t help but contort his neck around slightly, trying to get an eye of him, and..

Shit. He’d messed up. Badly.

“Angel, I’m-” He doesn’t want to beg. He doesn’t want to ask for forgiveness. Yet, the option of not doing it doesn’t exist. It’s not even a thought inside his head, and Crowley was notorious for being the most imaginative creature of all celestial and infernal (with the exception of God herself). 

Anxiously, he fidgets with his sunglasses. A shield, his last line of defence. They had rarely served their purpose with Aziraphale. The angel knew him (or so he thought). 

The part of him that’s jammed behind a locked door wants to ask (plead) for Aziraphale to tell him what he’s done wrong. While the demon has never been fond of reading, he’s always enjoyed the process of writing. For the past few centuries, he’d written his and Aziraphale’s story (in silence, of course). This was supposed to be the last chapters, with the enticing promise of a happy ending - mayhaps involving an apple to bring it full circle. Now, the words that had been written were promptly erased, and he wonders how much of the script was fictional. It had been intended to be a biography. 

He stands there, shoulders slouched and feet turned inwards as his hands search refuge within too-small pockets and he somewhat wishes that he was a human and it’d be normal to tap away on his phone and distract himself from this catastrophe. 

“Please, don’t say it like that..” That hurt. He feels twisted - and not the lackadaisical twisted he experiences when he’s curled up as a snake. It’s an ugly kind of twisted, knots upon knots that become tighter as if Aziraphale keeps pulling the strings tighter and tighter, and he wonders if this isn’t how a puppet feels being pulled against its will.

“I- Aziraphale-” 

“Let’s go.” He slowly stands up from the chair. Fast movements that aren’t anywhere close to graceful and his limbs doesn’t want to cooperate. They feel numb. He wonders if this is how Crowley feels when he learned to operate a human body. Eyes close, tightly, as the chair is pushed back into its place. He didn’t want to think of Crowley right now.

“Wait- wait- I’m sor-” Aziraphale wanted to listen. He just didn’t want to answer, as there wasn’t one to be found. His hands end up clutched in front of his waistcoat, and he can’t help but adjust it and straighten his coat as he doesn’t spare Crowley a glance (he couldn’t look at those goddamn sunglasses without ripping them away) as he makes his way out of the restaurant.

“We’ll talk in the car.”

Crowley is about to follow him, his feet are already leading the way, when someone taps him lightly on the shoulder. He tenses up, a sudden shift from the negligent posture from before, and- who- who dared to-

“Sir, are you paying?”

Right. They were at a restaurant. He snaps his fingers.

* * *

The Bentley wasn’t locked. That wasn’t to say that it was open for any humans to simply sit within her, drive away and utterly ruin the beauty that she was under Crowley’s attentive care. When the demon truly adored, there wasn’t a single part of him that wouldn’t show utmost worship, with heart and soul (if demons possessed souls was a heated debate within hell). 

The fact that Crowley, a demon (he had went through the unspeakable to prove it), contained more love than most angels would perhaps be surprising, until you realized that there isn’t much required to pass the small amounts of love that angels (with the exception of Aziraphale) possess.

So, the Bentley wasn’t locked. For Aziraphale. The Bentley wasn’t a normal car, which wasn’t very surprising when you take into consideration that she belonged to a demon. For one, she didn’t require gasoline nor any maintenance. A perfect exemplar of a vintage car that wouldn’t be able to have been achieved without the aid of demonic (and a bit of angelic) influence. And two, while Crowley wasn’t sure of exactly how sentient she was, it was clear that she wasn’t just machine. 

While she might have belonged to the demon, it was clear that she was her own lady. It was a rarity that Crowley could decide what music would be blasted throughout the car (but luckily, they had extremely similar tastes) and sometimes she was frustratingly (but somewhat endearingly) stubborn about not wanting to go fast. Aziraphale suspected that she didn’t want to end up in pieces. 

Aziraphale strides out of the restaurant, apologizing with little grace as he almost bumps into a red haired lady and a younger boy with a yellow-striped shirt, walking with haste towards where Crowley had parked the Bentley. Past brightly coloured storefronts with heavy steps and only short glimpses at the intriguing menus of the couple of restaurants he passes by, he continues under a short bridge and then turns right, the shining black beauty parked questionably beside a brick wall, almost covered from top to bottom in bright, green ivy, giving the dull architecture a needed splash of colour. 

So, when Aziraphale reaches the Bentley, she opens without issue as he collapses limp in the leather-clad seat. If Crowley had been able to decide who she would let in, Aziraphale would have been left trying to get the door open for a long, long while, but the Bentley was quite fond of the angel even if he sometimes held onto her a bit too tightly when Crowley was flying through the London streets. 

The sigh that he lets out is heavy. There’s quite a lot of weight to the simple sound, tones of fatigue and frustration folded in with layers of perplexion and puzzlement. He was dazed. A head full of thick, grey clouded thoughts that were spun together like cotton candy and stuck everywhere, a tangled web with no clear beginning or end, and even then, the ends would have been split, unable to be threaded through the needle used to stitch the fragments of his mind back together.

He slouches further, his legs limp but haphazardly stretched out, taking full advantage of the leg space that was just a little too large to not have been miracled. The leather is somewhat sticky against his coat, and it doesn’t allow for much fidgeting as it’s not far off being glued to the seat. Not that he had energy left to attempt moving. He sighs again, and opens his eyes to stare absently out of the window, watching cars drive by at a too-fast speed and the young kid excitedly hopping beside what he assumed to be her mother dressed in a garishly coloured knitted sweater with a pair of bright-yellow and black wellingtons. 

There’s a bird that flies by, lands on the ledge of a window before being chased away by the white cat watching behind the green-patterned curtain. The bird flies away. It’s quiet for being London. There’s pedestrians and cars, and there’s the rare sight of a bike but it’s a part of London - a bustle that fades into the background and isn’t something that Aziraphale after a few centuries within the city registers as loud.

Perhaps why he observes London as exceptionally quiet is because he’s desperate for a distraction. The dinner is stuck on repeat inside his head, and it’s quite impossible to not go over the words uttered that he remembers and where it had gone awry. With an exhausted puff of breath, he tilts his head backwards and eyes closed heavily once again.

He can’t help but grimace as he, perhaps inadvisable to do so, tries to figure out where it all went to hell (or heaven, as they were equally bad). It had been a perfectly nice and normal lunch with a nice and normal conversation. Aziraphale mutters sourly, squeezing his eyes further shut together as sunlight peeks through the car window, a warm sensation that contrasts with the otherwise ideal temperature of the Bentley. The kind of warmth that Crowley would have basked within, sunglasses resting on the tip of his nose as he’d languidly stretch out to fully enjoy the heat.

Aziraphale can’t help but let out an undignified high-pitched noise at the thought.

No. He wasn’t going to think about Crowley, nonetheless not an alternate scenario where Crowley would relish and revel in the wonders of humanity, where he wouldn’t constantly hide behind his blasted pair of too-polished sunglasses or lack any spine of his own (figuratively, not literally. Crowley’s body’s inability to behave by human limitations was part of his charm, snake and all). 

He draws out another unsated sigh which was definitely not the last of the day, and drags his hand through tangled white curls, tugging slightly in frustration.

There’s an extreme, perhaps exaggerated, sound of frustration within Aziraphale’s head as his traitorous mind doesn’t want to let Crowley go. Well, that was to be expected - today’s argument didn’t differ a lot from those a couple of centuries ago. To be honest, he was mildly confused to what had been the point of the argument. 

After all, all that he’d done was to ask if Crowley wanted something to nibble on. While, yes, Aziraphale wasn’t quite human nor was Crowley, and there wasn’t any need for them to eat more than for pleasure and pure sensation of delightful flavours that well-cooked and loved food could be. However, their dinners throughout the past millennia had become a foundation of their relationship and arrangement. Throughout the dinners, and especially within the past centuries, he’d noticed less-than-discrete glances at the fact that they were two dining, but always, only one of them eating, and according to common human conventions (conventions that Crowley would deem pointless and a prime example of humanity’s own ability to screw up.) indulging a little too much.

Besides, it’d be nice if they could just for once enjoy a lovely dinner together, without Crowley having to sit idle and without the discomfort of knowing he was perhaps a bit too fond of the human pleasures as an angel. It’d be nice if he could share it with Crowley.

While the Bentley was quite comfortable, there was an odd sensation of where you became too comfortable and it suddenly was uncomfortable. One of the oddities (although, perhaps not the nicest) about humanity. His legs are a bit hard to adjust, and his shoulders are turned just a bit off, and he can’t help but feeling somewhat prisoner of the seat. The encroaching atmosphere of Crowley doesn’t help - with tapes and CD’s haphazardly lying around his feet, a forgotten pair of glasses sticking out, the hint of the light and uncharastically dainty fragrance that Crowley had become more fond of recently, and.. it was the Bentley. It was part of Crowley. A detached limb. 

Right now, he felt like an intruder and shrinks further into the seat where he wasn’t supposed to be. 

He starts to tie up his bowtie, the tightly-tied fabric around his neck just a bit too tight and it doesn’t help with not feeling like he’s slowly being suffocated. By the fickle and foreign movements of clumsy hands, passerbys might believe that this was his first time untying a bowtie. It was far from correct, as he enjoyed the sensation of dressing himself as opposed to Crowley who just snapped his fingers. He just wanted to breathe. 

There’s a muted knock against the window. It’s not loud, but it’s a deviation from the hodgepodge that was the cacophony that had played in the background for the past however-many-minutes Aziraphale had spent within the car. It’s not the roar of a car flying by, nor it’s the muffled mumbles of conservation. It’s a clear-cut tone that echoes through the stifled silence within the car, and Aziraphale is looking straight ahead at Crowley’s face hidden by those damn glasses. 

While Crowley’s eyes might have been the most expressive part of him (as Aziraphale could attest to the times that he’d seen it uncovered) that didn’t mean that the rest was a statue. The foreign and bizarre posture with shoulders drawn back, and spine contorted in what wasn’t his usual unhurried state, rather wooden and unyielding, spoke of distress. With a surly not-smile and a negligent tilt of his head, there were clear hints that the demon was worn-out and weary. 

Aziraphale’s hands drop promptly from his half-opened bowtie into his lap, clutching them firmly together as he averts his gaze away from Crowley who opens the door with a taut grip and slides into his seat with utmost familiarity and grasps hard around the wheel.

Minutes pass without a word being uttered.

“You owe me.” 

“Ow-owe you?” Aziraphale can’t help but be startled by the sudden decision to resurrect their dispute, especially as he raised his brows in bewilderment. 

“Yes, owe me. You left me there all alone to pay for what you ordered.” There’s an unspoken angel echoing in the fragile silence.

“I’m- I’m-”

“Get to the chase.”

“Could you please stop being so impatient, Crowley? I- I don’t want to upset you-” Red cheeks, scrunching up his face, and gingerly looking down at his feet with tender eyes. In any other situation, Crowley would have referred to it as ‘adorable’, but in this situation, he was watching with little interest the brick wall clad with ivy straight ahead. He had almost gotten to where he would begin to count the leaves. There was a lot of leaves.

“You worry too much, you won’t upset me.” It’s barely a whisper, but it’s not said in his normal tone either. It’s delicate, yet there’s weight to be found within the brittle words. “You were the one who stormed out, all furious n’ that, forgetting to apologize for once.”

“Crowley..”

“I..” It’s a raspy sigh, and he brushes through his auburn curls with light fingers.

“I’m sorry, dear. I-” A soft, almost bashful tone, as Aziraphale glances at Crowley, and Crowley spots his anxious gaze out of the corner of his eye. 

“I know, angel.” He had told Crowley not to call him that previously during the dinner, but that had been when it had an intention beyond the soft and playful nickname (or pet name) it had turned into. This wasn’t the hurtful uttering from before, nor was it the normal affectionate one either. It was gentle and mild, with a bittersweet aftertaste that was slowly settling within Aziraphale’s lungs.

“Do you?” It’s asked with surprising simplicity.

“No.” Crowley laughs, but it’s dry and bitter, with an unintended amusement behind it, and he can’t help but look properly at Aziraphale who is looking right back, with a mellow expression but shoulders that aren’t quite as tense before. 

“Do you?” The demon can’t help but throw back the question, this time with a slightly richer laugh and an intended amused tone behind it. He smiles, and it’s not a happy or satisfied smile, but it isn’t sour either, and it ends somewhere strange between where Aziraphale can’t quite figure out what is intended behind it. 

“No, dear.” He responds with a somewhat fond chuckle, leans further back in the seat, and while the clouds still haven’t cleared out of the sky and he knows that eventually the rain will return, he doesn’t feel foolish when he thinks he can spot a faint rainbow forming in the distance. 

Crowley stretches out his legs, loosens further as he reaches up to fiddle with his sunglasses and Aziraphale can’t help but feeling foolish at his silly little thought that the glasses would be removed. The sun passes by every now and then, lightening up Aziraphale’s soft curls and playing tenderly against Crowley’s fingers resting upon the car wheel, with no intention to drive. There are a few odd glances from the passerby’s at the sight of the two men in the car, parked and not talking nor driving, but none of them noticed them, caught up in their own thoughts and the silence that has passed from stifling to temperate, an unbearable heat softening into something easy and light.

After quite a few moments pass and Crowley stretches out his neck, and tilts his head to the side, his eyes catches upon the half-tied tartan bow tie, lying between Aziraphale’s shirt collar and waistcoat, and Crowley can’t help but be curious why it was (he usually couldn’t help feeling curious).

“Did you finally decide to catch up with this century’s fashion?” His words could have been used as an insult, but it’s clear in how it’s spoken that they’re fond and playful, quite a contrast from their earlier conversation, but that was needed. They both knew their argument had been futile and slightly silly, and it's most likely fade away into obscurity (or so, they both hoped). 

“Wha- what do you mean?” It’s almost impossible to quash the thought of ‘adorable’ that pops up inside Crowley’s head, as Aziraphale looks at him with a befuddled glance and his nose scrunched up just so. What really makes Aziraphale look cute it is the slight tilt of his head, and the disarrayed curl that Crowley would very much like to brush back tenderly behind his ear and of course that doesn’t happen. 

Crowley might be impulsive, but he’s not completely unrestrained. Instead, he gestures with a vague movement towards the bowtie.

Aziraphale can’t help but look somewhat undignified at the implication that his bowtie wasn’t stylish, and while Aziraphale understands that the intention is similar to most of their light-hearted banter, and while it doesn’t hurt, it’s not like Aziraphale doesn’t know that he looks like he belongs in the early 20th century. Stuck in the past, meanwhile, Crowley is here in skin-tight jeans and a waistcoat that’s clearly updated to the modern wardrobe. He’s not fast enough to catch up, and the thought lingers, has lingered since decades back. 

“Since when are bowties outdated? I see plenty of nice young people with them these days, looking quite stylish, if I do say so myself.” The art of being able to suppress inner turmoil is perhaps not what most would associate with the angel, but he’s more than six-thousand years old and has been breaking the rules for more than half of those. He wouldn’t have gotten here, sitting beside a demon in a car and pondering their future together, if he hadn’t possessed the ability to act like a proper angel. What a proper angel entailed was still left to be discovered. While he hoped that he wouldn’t be required to interact with heaven or hell ever again, the ability to seem normal was proving to be quite useful with not utterly ruining their relationship. 

“But yours is tartan.” While Crowley attempts to make ‘tartan’ sound somewhat flippant, it ends up sounding fond, with an almost amused tone instead of the slick, quick barb he intended. Beezlebub (or any other demon) would be severely disappointed in his attempt, however, zir opinion was what Crowley cared the least about. Albeit that didn’t mean that he always wanted to seem mushy. 

Of course Aziraphale notices this, and of course he responds with one of his soft, mischievous smiles with a delighted glint in his eyes. Of course Crowley can’t help but be utterly enamoured. 

“What’s wrong with tartan, dear?” With Crowley’s slip-up, Aziraphale finds it quite easy to realize that Crowley doesn’t dislike his choice of wardrobe. Now, it might still be outdated, but Aziraphale wasn’t (and will never be) a person that desired to fit in. This isn’t to say that Aziraphale wasn’t insecure, nor sometimes wished that he was just slightly different, but, even an angel wasn’t perfect. Although, his self-doubt from before hasn’t disappeared, it’s a lot easier to play along with a sly smile and playful words. 

“It’s quite stylish. Don’t you think it makes me look quite fetching?” With a high-raised brow, and a crinkle smile, with eyes dancing with pleasure and delight, slightly rumpled and slightly disheveled curls, there’s no doubt that Aziraphale looked very fetching. 

Crowley is lucky that he only blushes a smidge, and doesn’t let out more than a stifled squawk that would hopefully pass as amusement, and not complete and utter endearment. There’s a spark within Crowley, a want that never ceases to go away, to simply reach out and respond with, ‘yes, angel, you look quite fetching’ and yet, he knows (he hopes) that if he’s patient, it’ll come. Maybe a few more dinners, maybe a few more easy conversations in the Bentley. They had defeated both heaven and hell, it was certainly written in stone that they deserve their happy ending.

“Maybe if we were back in the 19th century.” He doesn’t say any of the thoughts running through his head, and sometimes it’s easier to keep the conversation light and harmless, especially after what they had just recovered from. There wasn’t a need (ever) to repeat that particular discussion.

“Crowley!” While it might be intended as a perturbed quip, it’s clear from the hints of laughter and his relaxed shoulders, that there’s no ill intentions behind it. However, Crowley can’t help but notice how the atmosphere is slowly becoming somewhere too close to where he wanted to be, and, he doesn’t quite think that he could deal with that right in this moment. It could wait.

“Fine, fine.” He grumbles lightly, and it’s not impolite, but it’s not an invitation to continue their light banter either. Aziraphale can’t help but be disappointed as his impish grin shifts into something more neutral, albeit light-hearted, as he shuffles back in his seat, stretching out his legs and lets out a placid breath, because this was quite nice indeed, even if it seemed like it was coming to an end. 

It’s an amiable silence, which both of them are content with - it’s a big (extreme) improvement from the past tense silence that was stretched thinly between both of them, clear proof of the friction from before. Now, while it wasn’t the pleasant quiet when Aziraphale read a book and Crowley slowly nursed a glass of wine, observing Aziraphale from behind his glasses, it was somewhere close to the status-quo. 

Crowley, behind his glasses, glances back at Aziraphale who is looking out the window (at what, he doesn’t know) and the bowtie that still remains untied, and Crowley is known for being an extremely curious creature. His curiosity had both been his downfall and his ascent, so it’s not surprising that the answer to why Aziraphale had untied it lies close to the surface, teasing as if it had been a glass of the finest wine. He wanted to know. He always did.

“But why was it untied?” So he asks. 

Aziraphale blinked rapidly, a bit surprised at Crowley breaking the silence and he has to take a few moments to properly comprehend what Crowley was getting at, because, it had been quite easy to get caught in his thoughts - the previously mentioned slight insecurities and uncertainties hadn’t suddenly disappeared after a delightful conversation. He coughs lightly, blinks once again, and then it’s back to conversation, and trying to answer questions that you didn’t quite know the answer to.

“It felt stifling.” He says, after a few short moments where Crowley couldn’t help to tap his feet, impatient as always to simply get a response. He could be patient, but it wasn’t something that came natural to the demon, especially when the need for an answer was burning within his chest and he just wanted to know. A desire for knowledge was aptly suited for the serpent of Eden.

“Oh.” There’s not much else to say. It’s awkward, but Crowley tended to be awkward. He wasn’t proud of the fact nor did he like it, and it’d been one of those things that he had attempted to cast aside, but turned out that being awkward was as much as a part of him as being a snake or his sunglasses.

Aziraphale doesn’t respond, and while Crowley is well-aware that he didn’t give anything for the angel to respond to, that doesn’t stop the incoming dread of ‘I messed up again, fuck, shit’ that makes him cold and hot at the same time, a shiver that he’ll know will grow and manifest itself within his body, root itself down to his skin, blood and bones until it finds home within his metaphysical being.

He can’t remain quiet.

“I am sorry, you know-” 

“I know, my dear.” Aziraphale’s words aren’t what Crowley imagined. He had a vision inside his head (clear, as it tended to be) with bitter words, a raised brow and pointed tone that ‘of course you should be sorry, silly demon’ and well, that wasn’t what came out. No, it was slightly confused words uttered lightly and a delicate smile with curious eyes, as if Aziraphale didn’t know why Crowley had attempted to apologize again.

He lets out a chuckle, albeit, it’s filled with much joy. It’s merely serving as something that isn’t staring at Aziraphale with blinking eyes and a dumbfounded expression across his face.

“Now, let’s drive, shall we?”

And so he does.


	2. Chapter 2

The heavy stack of dusty books hits the table with a weighty sound, placed upon the mahogany surface where there was just enough space for them, the desk sprawling with books that are old and new, quite a fair amount of trinkets and baubles and an impressive collection of just-empty teacups resting uncharastically on top of the stacks upon stacks of books. 

Even though it was clear by their slightly worn-out and ornamental covers and the yellow-stained pages that the books were very old, they were in utmost pristine condition. Aziraphale carefully adjusts them amongst the mess, peering closer at them behind his small round spectacles that most who didn’t know the fact he was an angel suspected was to be able to read properly, when in reality they were simply an aesthetic choice. He was quite happy that there was a normal excuse for reading them while he was reading, as he didn’t think he had quite the flair that Crowley possessed to be able to pull off glasses without a proper reason (although Crowley definitely had a proper reason).

He taps his fingers lightly against his chin, mulling over the stack of books that he had just placed upon the table that was barely visible under the books. The stack of books in question were around eight books, all more than two centuries old and part of his extensive theological collection. It might seem odd for an angel to collect books when he knew what was true or not (albeit, most religions had it right in some way), Aziraphale found it very fascinating with the many interpretations of the world humanity had had throughout the millennia. 

Right in this moment, his fascination with the books was another story. An angel, questioning his own belief, an amusing thought, but it was currently what Aziraphale was contemplating. Mayhaps that was why he had rifled through most of his bookshelves leading for all available surfaces that wasn’t the bookshelves to be swimming in books of all sorts, and leaving the bookshelves humorously spartan. A visitor (if Aziraphale had even had the thought to open the shop while it was in this state) might have been confused, amused or both at the sight of the chaos. 

He grasps at the third book in the stack, an old text written about the interpretation of Christiainty, and skims through it with a distracted gaze, caught up in his own thoughts.

This wasn’t helping. There wasn’t any human (or other beings) that had the truth figured out. Not surprising since he himself didn’t know what was true anymore.

He sighs, puts it back on top of the stack, and glances with longing at the empty cups. He wanted tea, very badly. Reaching out for the cup, he stops short, because.. one, two, five, ten cups of tea in two days. He might enjoy tea quite a bit, but he wasn’t hedonistic. Indulging might be one of his favourite pastimes, but an angel couldn’t enjoy themselves without any limits.

Instead, he returns to the stack of books spread out on the floor. Reorganizing didn’t require much thought, and at this pace, any distraction was welcome.

* * *

Crowley has quickly come to the realization that after the apocalypse when he doesn’t have to attempt to seem somewhat competent or live with the underlying threat of hell hiding just behind the corner, that he doesn’t have a lot to do. 

There’s the occasional dinners with Aziraphale, of course. There's many, many drives through the intricate web of tumult and turmoil that was London, and there’s the back-and-forth within his too-empty and too-large apartment. Most of time is spent lounging in his throne (which he was regretting more and more that he had acquired) with fingers tapping away at his phone, scrolling through the insignificance that was the internet incapable of looking away from the pure stupidity that humans somehow possessed. Sometimes he wondered how they’d come so far.

He taps on someone’s selfie without considering what he was doing, and reaches for the half-empty bottle of a too-fine wine to be enjoyed by taking a large gulp right from the bottle. Crowley didn’t care. It was good wine, anyways. He’s stretched out, contorted in a lethargic and apathetic posture, as he takes another sip from his wine and changes to a new, equally uninteresting social media platform, skimming through the words of idiocy (and the rare words that utter a chuckle) and can’t help but think, for the hundredth time, that this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

He stares at his phone, at the numbers that he knows inside and out by now. He’d like to press call, to have Aziraphale call, and to ask him if he wants to come over and share half a bottle of wine that would taste better if it wasn’t drank in a half-asleep state of misery. He doesn’t even want that. What he really wants only comes up at times like these, where is almost-drunk and desperate for any kind of attention and affection, and when his plants aren’t the best kind of company.

It takes a few attempts of trembling fingers before he manages to close his phone and he tosses it onto the table, and doesn’t even check if the screen cracked as he stands up on wobbly feet, snaps his fingers, and stumbles towards his bed where he flops down ungracefully and takes a deep breath into the sheets.

He combs his fingers through his half-messy hair as he turns onto his back, stomach and then onto his side, and puts his hands under the pillow and spreads himself out across the entire bed and he can’t help but think that it’s empty, half-empty to be exact.

He hates that he misses Aziraphale when they had breakfast this morning which had been nice. Quaint. (not what he wanted).

He should have called Aziraphale is the last thought he has before falling into a restless sleep. He wakes up four hours later, at five am and presses repeat.

* * *

The character of the smoked salmon is almost lost within the rich, creamy hollandaise that mingle beautifully with the velvety flavours of the poached egg, however, the crumbled texture and slightly sharp tang of the muffin makes all components of the delightful dish come together in bliss. Aziraphale takes another careful bite of the eggs benedict, and lets out a contented hum and closes his eyes as he continues to savour it.

Crowley has gotten the act of watching Aziraphale during their many, many rendezvouses that he’d lost count somewhere in the 20th century. Taking a sip of a surprisingly good cup of coffee, leaning back in his chair as nonchantaley as he can accomplish, and pretending not to be staring at Aziraphale constantly. It had become a routine, a prevalent part of their outings, one that Crowley hoped that Aziraphale wasn’t fully privy to. His sunglasses had quite a few purposes, hiding his adoring (and somewhat too intense) gaze from the angel was just one of them. However, he wondered if maybe it would be smart to stop wearing them sometimes, maybe that’d help with making up Aziraphale catch up faster. 

He didn’t want to be impatient, but as they had enjoyed several friendly, good-natured superficial conversations within the past days, leaving out what Crowley was slowly becoming more and more desperate for, he didn’t know if it was possible for him to keep going for weeks, months, years, maybe even decades, until they’d finally get there. Heaven and hell were gone, and Crowley was at the end of his rope of trying to figure out what was preventing Aziraphale from- from- anything but the polite conversations stretched thinly with uneasiness hiding beneath the weak seams. 

The small, quiet whisper that mayhaps they didn’t want the same thing that slowly grew in volume was a thought that Crowley had spent quite a bit of effort to suppress. Yet, it was growing increasingly more difficult to not even consider it.

Aziraphale looks up at Crowley, almost finished with his eggs benedict, and smiles softly, and it hurts.

Of course, Crowley’s internal dilemma doesn’t show and he continues to slowly sip on his coffee, appearing somewhat calm and collected. Only somewhat. Appearing fully calm and collected was something that Aziraphale had never seen the demon accomplish, and he wondered if that was even possible. He thought it was very unlikely.

Aziraphale lays his fork and knife on the side of the plate, leans back slightly in his chair as he adjusts his bowtie, lets out a satisfying exhale and grabs a napkin to wipe of the hollandaise that had ended up on his hand. The plate isn’t completely empty, and there's a small pieces of muffin and quite a large piece of smoked salmon that lies in a pathetic puddle of hollandaise. While Aziraphale didn’t always finish his meals, the frequency of which it had been happening during their past dinners together had been a lot higher than usual. That’s to say, all of them. 

Crowley wasn't completely unobservant. He would have to be completely blind to not have noticed Aziraphale's recent hesitance when it came to food. The amount of times that Aziraphale had ordered desert could be counted on one hand, and the reluctance he'd shown to eating had been very surprising. The angel had never been a glutton. He’d savor, not devour. Precise bites eaten with care, letting each element of the dish play across his mouth, slowly dissecting the wonders of what he’d just have eaten. Yet, the meticulous way that he’d been eating the past times had been quite different. There’d been unsure handling of cutlery, long pauses where he’d peer at the food as if it was suspicious or contained poison, even though they tended to eat at some of the finest establishments in London. 

Now, Crowley didn’t find this completely strange - there were times where he had gotten, well, tired of sleep and what humanity had to offer. It wasn’t strange to assume that Aziraphale went through periods where he didn’t enjoy a particular food or would rather devour a book than a well-cooked meal. However, the sudden shift in his behavior and the apprehension he had shown whenever Crowley mentioned indulgence or enjoying a meal a little extra, made it clear to the demon that there was something unknown troubling the angel.

He just didn’t know what, and he could feel the need for knowledge slowly growing from a seed into a sapling into a plant bearing fruit and he wondered if this was how Eve had felt when she’d wanted to take a bite from the forbidden fruit.

The easiest way would be to simply ask Aziraphale but Crowley wasn’t known for doing things the easy way. Rather the opposite, he had a tendency (which he wasn’t fully aware of) to over complicate everything and anything. This problem wasn’t an exception. 

Besides, Aziraphale wasn’t the best with confrontations. He was quite terrible at them, with his fidgeting and his avoidance to respond in words that could be comprehended by the average being, mundane or supernatural.

Of course, Crowley craved an answer, not unlike how Aziraphale craved an answer to Crowley’s odd and dismissive behavior.

“You’re not going to finish?” He asks, because while Crowley wouldn’t ask outright, he wasn’t subtle. Subtlety, after an incident with a goat and a bottle of wine, had been avoided by the demon, and he’d found himself at home in the flashy and grandiose, even though he wasn’t as cool as he thought. Perhaps a few decades ago Crowley would have been called cool, but these days, not unlike Aziraphale, most observers saw him as someone a couple of decades outdated, even though Crowley actually tried to keep up with the modern world. When a decade seems like a year, it’s proven hard to catch up when everything changes each day, if not minutes.

“Oh, no. Did you want a bite?” Luckily, Aziraphale doesn’t look upset, although, there’s a change in his eyes and his adjustment of his lapels aren’t the appeased movements of comfort, and he shuffles, this time a bit wooden, within his chair. However, he’s still smiling and hasn’t ran out, or belittled Crowley, so he’ll take that as a win. Maybe this will work. Maybe.

“I’m good, angel. Coffee is enough for me.” And, maybe that was a worse response by the way that Aziraphale seems to shrink into his chair, glance away rapidly and let out a sheepish cough, and Crowley can feel the sand slipping out of his hands and he doesn’t know what he did wrong. Part of him wants to reach out to Aziraphale, ask him “Am I not enough? Why do I upset you? Do you not want me anymore?” but he doesn’t think that him being desperate would be a good reaction. It never was.

Meanwhile, Aziraphale can’t help but be disappointed that Crowley didn’t want to share a wonderful and delightful meal with him, and once again, he was alone in his desire for a good meal and a good conversation, and thoughts similar to Crowley’s go through his head.

“Oh, okay. Well..” 

A few moments pass, both well-aware of the far-from-comfortable silence that is slowly shaping between them and it isn’t the first time this week (it’s Tuesday) nor the last. They both wish, quite desperately, that they had the words to make it vanish, and Crowley is quite fond of the idea of simply using a miracle to make it all better. Even he wouldn’t go that far if it was possible, though.

“I was planning on getting chocolates afterwards.” Aziraphale had been planning on this even before this conversation, because even though he was going through a predicament with indulgence, he’d been desiring handmade dark chocolate pralines from his favourite London-based chocolate shop to enjoy while reading a good book. He hadn’t been planning on telling it out loud, rather the opposite, as he’d thought it’d be best to keep it discreet. 

However, somehow, he thought that Crowley’s bizarre behavior had something to do with Aziraphale not eating. He didn’t have a clue as to why, but sometimes his own insecurities was worth trying to stitch the small holes together before they became too large.

It seems that he was right, as Crowley’s shoulders visibly relax and he throws back a fond smile at Aziraphale, and maybe, with careful consideration and precise planning they wouldn’t have to rebuild the bridges they had spent the past millennia building up.

* * *

While the chocolates within the small cornershop were remarkably suited to Aziraphale’s refined and sophisticated tastes, the same couldn’t be said about the plum-coloured smooth exterior that was a stark contrast against the surrounding detailed stone and brick architecture of the corner. Nonetheless, this was London and only twenty or so meters away there was a large glass-and-concrete cube that Aziraphale wouldn’t classify as architecture as his own tastes tended to lean towards ‘lovely victorian’.

It had taken a few strolls past the corner and a few recommendations from the small number of visitors to his bookshop he was acquainted, and reading through a few articles delving into the up-and-coming London food scene that he’d read in 2011, to get him to put his foot within the shop. He had tentatively tasted one of the samples placed upon the dark-wooden display and had returned a few times every year since.

Now, it had become a part of his routine. He opens the door and is promptly greeted by the surprisingly large crowd. While it’s not a very large crowd, mayhaps nine or ten people of which two are children who are surely too young to properly savour the chocolate, the shop isn’t very large either. There’s an old, expensive round table that’s placed in the middle of the shop and is clearly meant to be the centerpiece of the shop, and there’s a vintage wooden set of counters where a cashier machine can be found along with lavish boxes of chocolate decorated with purple and gold. The furniture (and chocolate), while minimal, is smack dab in the middle and only leaves a small amount of space for the customers, so when Aziraphale enters the shop, it’s not a surprise that he’s feeling a bit overwhelmed.

Aziraphale is used with narrow spaces where the floor is barely visible and where there’s almost a guarantee that you’ll get lost in the mayhem, where it seems inevitable that you’ll walk into furniture or an unbelievably tall stack of unorganized clutter. Used might be an understatement, as it could be argued that it was his native habitat, at least by the state of his bookshop. However, when just one human was introduced, his contentment rapidly shifted into vulnerability. 

To his left, there’s a sliver of non-occupied space that gives him a peek at what selection of chocolate pralines is available today. There’s a small label in front of each platter, written in a loopy-cursive script. “70% Peruvian dark chocolate, hazelnut and sea-salt pralines” is what’s closest to him, round but not smooth dark pralines sprinkled with sea-salt and placed in a small shining-silver paper cup. On the other side of the table, there’s what seems to be another dark chocolate praline sprinkled with some kind of nut, and Aziraphale can’t help but feel delightfully curious over tasting the delicacy. 

He’s just about to walk to the other side of the table and have a closer look when he twists around, somewhat distracted, and almost bumps straight into one of the well-dressed children with blonde pigtails and an excited grin across their face. He blinks slowly, staring vaguely at their back as they run towards what he assumed to be their father, peering at the pralines beautifully upon the dark table in front of the windows.

“Dad, an I ‘ave the blue ones?” Their voice is almost indistinguishable from the hundreds of kids (and adults) Aziraphale had heard throughout the ages wishing for a particular thing. It’s not something that tends to bother him, however, now he can’t help but feel slightly irked at the tone as he continues to observe and listen, caught up in his own thoughts.

“The one’ with the sparkles, please, dad?” Aziraphale knows from the slight furrowed brows of the father that the chances that the child will be given the chocolates (which are just a tad too expensive to be given to a nine-year old) is very slim, and as the man responds to his child, Aziraphale can’t help but feel somewhat sorry for them as their excitement fades away and their excited bouncy steps quiets down, and they must be a well-behaved child because they do not ask their father again, merely glance distracted at the space around them and watching with what Aziraphale assumes to be unease as the crowd within the shop has grown, as they become furtherly hunched into themselves.

He’s sympathetic towards them, and, before the apocalypse-that-didn’t-happen, without a doubt he’d make a slight miracle happen and make the kid walk away with a big box of chocolates and a wide grin across her face. Even though he knew they were too young (most likely) to properly savour the excellency of the chocolates, he thought that they deserved to feel happy, comforted.

Now, there’s a clear hesitance as he bites his lip and adjusts the lapels of his coat, glancing down at the wooden floor, because miracles hadn’t exactly become something he was eager to commit after the encounter with heaven and hell. What if- what if- There was a lot of what ifs, and Aziraphale wasn’t very keen to receiving the answers to those what ifs.

Yet, he’d make the child overjoyed and the clearly uncomfortable visit wouldn’t be remembered as that, rather, they’d remember it fondly, at least, that is what he would have hoped.

“Are you getting something? Otherwise, you’re kinda in the way. I want those chocolates.” The shrewd voice coming from beside him makes him jump slightly, glancing at the woman with sharp cheekbones, red lips and eyes that weren’t unfriendly, but nowhere close to soft either, with surprised eyes and he takes a step to the side, nodding slightly with red-stained cheeks.

“Oh, of course, dear, it wasn’t my intention to get in the way- I was, you see,-” His floundering for what to say is quickly cut off by a pointed glare.

Awkwardly, he twists around and grasps at the table where he spots the pralines the child was talking about. They’re covered in white chocolate, but decorated with what seems to be sugar crystals and freeze dried powdered blueberries, filled with a blueberry cream. It’s not hard to see why the kid would find them delightful. They glitter in the sunlight, not unlike jewels or gemstones, and Aziraphale finds himself finding them just as delightful as the kid did.

There’s a small spark of an idea that is quickly growing into a larger flame inside his head, and he can’t help but smile proudly to himself at this wonderful solution.

He makes his way towards the counter with buoyant steps, and there’s a couple of customers in front of him. His eyes wander, occasionally, back to the father and the child who is now accompanied by their sibling, and he sighs of relief every time he notices that they hadn’t left just yet. That doesn’t stop him from tapping his foot against the floor nervously while he impatiently awaits his turn. 

This would work. 

“I’d like a small box filled with the ‘winter-shimmer’ chocolate pralines, please.” While Aziraphale might excel at concealing unease, the same couldn’t be applied to repressing joy and eagerness. It slipped out, through bright-blue fond eyes and a wide smile where sunlight seemed to seep out of blinds that couldn’t quite be closed. Quaint words are exchanged between Aziraphale and the cashier as she grabs one of the purple and gold-embossed boxes and places six of the pralines within the box with practiced hands. 

The cashier finds herself smiling right back at Mr. Fell, who hadn’t shown up in a few months. While chocolate shops didn’t have what could be called regulars, the middle-aged man overly fond of bowties and the caramel-coloured coat she’d never seen him without, would mayhaps be the closest to one. He tended to show up about once every month and had done since she’d began working here part-time (a job which had now turned into full-time when she didn’t just assist with the customers), so it had been a pleasant surprise to see him entering through the door. While what they exchanged could just barely be classified as small talk, it was always thrilling to hear one of the odd man’s many facts and short tales, especially once they’d taken a turn towards the historical.

However, it was quite odd to see the man purchasing the more ‘out-there’ pralines as he tended to prefer the dark chocolates, something else they had in common.

She hands him the box with a slight grin and a goodbye, and with excited eyes and a chipper farewell, Aziraphale rushes through the small shop when he notices that the father and the two children are just about to leave.

Aziraphale was an angel, which meant that he could snap his fingers and not have to worry about the chance that they would leave before he was done, however, after the apocalypse, the act of an angelic miracle had become an increasingly rare sight. One which Aziraphale didn’t fully realize.

“Oh, excuse me, can you wait just a moment,” Aziraphale rushes out the words in a tone that appears loud and hasty, and it cuts straight through the quiet conversation the small family had been having, and Aziraphale finds himself faced with three pairs of eyes.

A pair of brown eyes that look vaguely confused, and that quickly glance away once they’ve gained eye contact with him. 

A pair of wide brown eyes, but lighter, that blink up at him with a slight glint that he doesn’t know if it’s curiosity or alarm.

And a pair of green eyes that are the only ones on his eye-level that stare right at him, a slightly-quirked brow and an intense expression, as if he’s wondering what this stranger with almost-white hair, that appears to be eager and nervous wants.

“Hm?” The man asks, in a tone that doesn’t have much substance. Disinterest, and a slight annoyance at being interrupted, with an undertone of skepticism. Aziraphale might be starting to regret his decision, just a tiny bit.

“Oh, I-” He blushes, because he doesn’t want to fumble or mumble while trying to appear sensible, and forces himself through his nerves to take a short breath and try to compose his words into comprehensibility, “Well, I, I do apologize for interrupting but, oh,” While Aziraphale is utmostly fond of words, both in the written (especially written) and spoken form, right now he wishes they wouldn’t be utmost nonsensical.

The increasingly furrowed brows and the impatient movements from the children isn’t helping with his struggles, certainly not. Rather, he finds them having the opposite effect of making him feel as if he has to rush through them and appear as even more of a nitwit.

“I overheard your child-” He gestures at the blonde kid who has taken to sway back and forth, while whispering with their brother. “and they.. well, they wanted pralines, so, well,.” Aziraphale can’t help but glance down at his shoes, “I got some for them.”

What happens next is something that Aziraphale would rather be forgotten.

He’s glancing up at the man with hopeful and tender eyes, a flickering but nervous smile, as he moves the box forwards. The kid, that had been looking at him quite suspiciously before, begins to look enthused as they spot the box of chocolates they desired, and their small hands start to reach out to it, and Aziraphale feels the relief slowly building up as this may just work.

Of course, the relief quickly evaporates as the man scoffs with confusion and shakes his head at Aziraphale. While not a rude action, it’s clear that it’s dismissive and doesn’t want to deal with the frumpy man standing in front of him, suspiciously offering his kid chocolates and listening to conversations that he had no part in. 

It’s a short goodbye, one assisted with a sharp tone and brief words that doesn’t hide an ounce of politeness, and disappointed eyes from the kid as they’re dragged away from the shop, leaving Aziraphale standing outside the drab exterior contemplating (unwillingly) what had happened. He can feel a mix of emotions (none of them good), a slow growth from within that’s tangling up with his previously buoyant mood and tainting it, slipping through the small cracks within his not-contended exterior and escalating the growth of uncertainty and dread within him.

He just wanted to do good. An action of kindness and caring. Those things angels were supposed to do, and one of the few parts of the job that he enjoyed. It felt ugly, a knife getting stabbed through an already-bleeding wound, remedy unknown, and it doesn’t help with the lack of direction or clarity that he has. He wanted to do good, and now the world was working actively against him.

The sun isn’t pleasant, and he glances down at the chocolates that have already started to melt.

He didn’t like white chocolate.

* * *

The wine has lost its flavour. It’s not unlike drinking water, as Crowley swirls the wine within the glass, a fickle movement as he takes his.. tenth? twentieth? he’d lost count by his thirtieth, sip of wine and continues to let the wine stain his mouth and his head and let it drown out the noise that’d been playing on repeat since.. since, right, when he and Aziraphale had gotten dinner at a small, hole-in-the-wall place.. yesterday or was it the day before yesterday.. It didn’t matter. Aziraphale, that was what it was. That was what it always was. 

He collapses into his couch which isn’t comfortable when sober and is definitely not when he’s drunk and can barely handle having legs and arms, and when adjusting into anything near a pleasant position is vaguely impossible. He groans or he whines, he’s not sure. It’s a sound, a high-pitched sound that Crowley wouldn’t utter if he wasn’t swimming in anguish and red wine, and one that might come the closest to a verbal description of the battlefield inside Crowley’s imaginative head. 

Crowley is fast, doesn’t follow the instructions he’s given himself, and he’s not opposed to driving against a red light. He’s impulsive, a loose cannon without a fuse, and tied together with rubber bands. Rubber bands that can be loose and wobbly, a flexibility that doesn’t have a particular pattern or rhythm. However, rubber bands aren’t infinite concepts that go beyond light and mass (which Crowley happens to be, demon and immortal, and all) and they have a limit that doesn’t seem to stay consistent, because everytime they’re stretched out to their extremes, when they snap can’t be foretold.

Crowley is sloppy and slack, unpredictable until without warning, he snaps. Usually, someone ends up getting hit in the face (metaphorically) by the (metaphorical) rubber band. It’s easy to forget that the world isn’t his and Aziraphale’s retreat, that the world is bigger than an angel and a demon, than a war between heaven and hell, and even god herself.

It’s sticky against his fingers, a thin liquid that drops from his index finger to his thumb, stains the edge of the glass and drips onto the glass surface of the newly-miracled end table as he lets go of the glass, and it’s dropped, balancing precariously on the edge of the foot. It doesn’t spin in a circle, it doesn’t have a destination to reach and so, it can wobble back and forth as if the glass is a sentient being that has a decision to make and it doesn’t want to commit to anything, in case where it lands is where it’ll stumble upon itself and the wine will spill onto the empty floor and it’ll be wasted. Not that being drunk like it’s a cheap bottle of knock-off Dr. Pepper is any better. 

The snap of his finger isn’t anything remarkable. Rather, it’s the opposite. A clumsy movement that isn’t because of Crowley’s slithering grace and charm, rather, it’s lackluster and tepid. Calling it a snap of fingers isn’t very accurate either. It’s slippery and slipshod, a rubbing of fingers that doesn’t have a hint of the theatricality his normal snap possess. 

Yet, Crowley’s magical powers doesn’t have a lot of personality nor an opinion on his laughable attempt at a snap, and so, they function as usual, meaning the wine doesn’t have to feel threatened of the floor as it’s reversed, and instead of dripping downwards, it drips upwards and crawls back into the comfort of it’s home within the glass, and doesn’t remember a lot from it’s small adventure.

The numbness that the too-good wine provided was slowly dissipating. The downsides (or upsides, depending on who you asked) of being a demon was that the lethargic and lazy feeling of drunkenness didn’t want to stay for longer than how long it took to finish and refill a glass, and so, it meant either to waste too many bottles of wine or to go through the unnecessarily uncomfortable process of sobering yourself up. 

He doesn’t want to sober up. It’s not a pleasing sensation, and it’s not a miracle that works with wild imagination and a pathetic snap of fingers. It’s a concentrated effort to reverse actions limited to your own body and bottles without requiring winding back the entire miserable scene of suffocating himself with the repetitive motion of drinking wine while he’s forcing himself not to grab the phone that lies on the kitchen counter, and press call.

While it’s nowhere close to being discoperated, sobering up has the vague notion of feeling like you’re slowly pushing and pulling, refiguring the careful stitches of time and space simply to not be stuck in a half-dazed cloud of apathy. 

Even though it’s something that lies somewhere between shedding your skin (he was a snake) and being forced to endure one of Aziraphale’s many sad magical acts (there was a lot that Crowley found charming about Aziraphale, but the magical acts weren’t one of them), it’s not like he wants to lie down in the uncomfortable couch and stare with blank eyes at the equally blank ceiling and be on the verge where he’s too tired to miracle another bottle and where he’s too melancholic to sleep. 

So, he sobers up.

It’s drawn out, a technique that becomes more perplexing and problematic depending on how much alcohol is wasting space within his corporal form, and while he’s nowhere close to beating his record of how many bottles of wine he’s consumed in one sitting, it’s not close to the casual indulgence of alcohol that he prefers.

Right now, it’s an arduous process where he has to gather the last parts of his mind that is coherent, to begin the task of emptying his body of the wine and leave space for the multitude of emotions that he could already feel seeping through the edges as one bottle fills up, and then another, and he’s reminded as to why he had feasted on the wine to begin with.

Regret comes out of temporary hibernation and claims it’s place where the lacking riesling (a wine that he wasn’t keen on drinking again) had taken as it’s temporary home until it returned to the wine bottle. As all of Crowley’s emotions, it’s not a bottle of 100% regret and there’s a bunch of unidentifiable and dubious ingredients that imitates the blend which is somewhere close to what Crowley would expect regret to be.

It is regret that is from the ‘Aziraphale’ label, where most ingredients aren’t listed and where you tend to be suspicious of how it gained its bittersweet and longing aftertastes. It’s regret that’s aged, and unlike wine or cheese, it doesn’t contribute to the quality. Regret isn’t expected to stay within your veins for hundreds of years, and it’s meant to be a medicine to harmful behavior. However, the ‘Aziraphale’ branded regret was never marketed as a quick-fix and solution-to-it-all, and Crowley doesn’t think he’ll figure out what it really is.

A dragged-out breath, a sound he wished wasn’t full with tainted hope that's gotten diluted down to a mere drop within a turbulent sea where it’s adrift and doesn’t remember where it’s intended destination was, roaming lost roads for somewhere to rest.

Crowley needed rest. He was tired, yet sleep had decided to play hide and seek in the vast expanse that was the woes of the demon. It was a futile chase, where he’d lost the map and the compass that he’d used to navigate through the past six-thousand years, and where the treasure must have sunken six thousand feet to the bottom of the holy-water sea.

The observer might believe that Crowley is fishing in a one-foot deep fountain for a deep-sea fish, and some of that convoluted metaphor is true, but really, he wasn’t fishing in a one-foot deep fountain. He was fishing in the Atlantic of imagination and delusion. If Crowley knew that someone called his brain a one-foot deep fountain, they’d surely regret it because he knew (and most beings beyond humanity) that he had fantasy that couldn’t be measured in mortal units. He came somewhere between God and most of the non-demon inhabitants of hell when it came to the limits of his mind. 

Creativity usually didn’t cause humans to get into heaven, rather the opposite, which is quite ironic if you consider the complete lack of it that demons tend to possess (Crowley being the exception here). 

Crowley found himself at a place where he’d never think he’d reach. It was akin to trying to get rid of ducks after you had fed one or two of them, and then they’d never leave you alone, until someone else came with a more appealing loaf of bread. He still found himself bitter over the betrayal of the ducks within St. James’s park. Evil buggers they were.

However, Crowley didn’t know how he’d gotten here. He wasn’t a good demon, and he wasn’t a good person either, he tended to think that he fell somewhere between the two. The plan that he had lived by had an end, an end scheduled to happen ‘when the world ended’. Of course, when he’d made his vague-ever-changing plan of befriending the angel, it had been meant as one of those funny things, ‘oh, that’ll never come’ (this was before the mentions of an apocalypse had started to spread through the grapevine within hell, and as Crowley tended to spend most of his time on earth, it’d taken a couple of more centuries to reach him) and surprise, surprise, what had been intended as a joke eventually became the truth.

It was what he assumed was the end, and the beginning of what came next. Now, Crowley kept this close to his unnecessary-and-just-there-for-comfort heart, but he was a reluctant romantic who had always thought that all (this did not apply to Hastur) deserved their happy ending, and he’d had six-thousand years to picture his own.

He’d been so sure when they’d sat in the Ritz, fragile words of hope whispered to each other, that this was that. That on the other side, there was a hand to hold as they watched humanity wilt and flourish, and where there was a home that wasn’t cold and grey, where books and plants would become their own Eden, where there wasn’t a forbidden fruit and a flaming sword to be given away. A garden where it all began, and a garden where it all would end.

And yet, yet, that wasn’t anywhere close to where he was. Aziraphale was god-knows-where and he was here, half-sober with now almost-full bottles of wine discarded across the floor as he lies not-asleep and not-awake on a couch that he’d gotten to never use and here he was, stuck to the concrete-box he’d told himself not to call a home, but now, now where would he go because the key to the garden was almost at the bottom of the six-thousand feet deep holy water sea and he didn’t believe that Aziraphale would take the leap of faith into unknown depths.

He wants to sleep. He can’t, but he wants to. He’s tried sleeping in his bed, on the couch, the floor and the ceiling - and even if he’s miracled a pile of pillows or a bed that barely fits his own body, there’s an empty space that has always been empty but he knows what’s missing without having known it there.

He wants. He carves. He desires. He doesn’t remember before, before Aziraphale existed, when he’d been alone. He’d never been allied with heaven nor hell. There might have been a war between longing and his own sanity, but it was the victor that wrote history, and his sanity had lost centuries ago and sometimes he wonders why he’s still fighting when the battlefield was empty, and there was only wishes being built from the ashes of faith.

There’s fatigue, a heavy feeling that keeps him tethered to the ground (close to hell), a feeling that doesn’t exist in the physical plane, a feeling that cannot be seen and a feeling that cannot be torn apart. 

He knows the solution. Of course he does. Everything was based around the solution, the solution which he’d never had the keys to. The keys were stained in holy water and belonged to Aziraphale, Aziraphale who wouldn’t use them even if Crowley pleaded. Even if Crowley got down on his two knees and begged, begged for what he wanted. Aziraphale wouldn’t listen, and he’d continue to dangle the keys in front of him knowing they’d never get used.

Maybe these past six-thousand years had been a waste of time, and maybe he should sleep and wake up when centuries had passed, and when all he’d be was a fond memory for the angel that’d still be in his bookshop reading the same books, eat at the same places with the same light hum and the same soft smile, but without the same company and Crowley would still be here, in the sea of bad metaphors and uncomfortable couches, and- and-

He couldn’t go on like this.

He stands up on wobbly legs, the last of the alcohol leaving his veins as he saunters towards the kitchen, and grabs a glass of water as he snaps his fingers and this time it isn’t the weak snap of a drunken demon, but the cold snap of fingers of someone who has just woken up from a six-thousand year old nap.

Aziraphale didn’t want him. It was a truth, it was mayhaps the only truth that Crowley couldn’t fix with a snap of his fingers, and it was mayhaps the only truth that Crowley wanted to be false. 

Yet, he’s a demon and he’s not god.

This isn’t his game to play, and he’s done being a piece he cannot control.

He sleeps.


	3. Chapter 3

Aziraphale wasn’t the kind of angel to take initiative. He wasn’t a push-over nor was he patient, both two things that had falsely been assumed about the angel. Perhaps, in the past, he may have been both, but we weren’t in the past, we were in the present where Aziraphale was knocking furiously on a certain demon’s door with a torn-apart jacket and messy almost-white curls, and with a pair of forlorn eyes staring back at Crowley’s bleary, sleepy yellow eyes as he opened the door, clearly unprepared at the sight of the angel that twisted his heart around and around, and the twisting that turned into a rope that was quickly slipping through his hands and here he was at the threshold with Aziraphale looking as if he’d had stumbled upon heaven or hell, and Crowley wonders if he’s back in the game.

A few days had passed since Crowley had fallen asleep and decided to throw the dice back into Aziraphale’s hand which hadn’t been thrown until now, where the angel looks more human than immortal and where Crowley cannot comprehend what’s going on when the angel collapses within his arms, clenching tightly around his arms and head turned into Crowley’s neck and he wonders if he never woke up and if this his brain playing cruel jokes on him until he’ll wake up in an empty bed to an empty apartment where the phone never calls and where he doesn’t eat and the chocolates that he’d gotten for Aziraphale will become molten in the bottom of his almost-empty pantry.

Yet, it’s not. It’s not a dream (might be a nightmare, though), because then Aziraphale wouldn’t be letting out heavy sobs and Crowley’s shoulders wouldn’t become stained with tears and he wouldn’t be standing there, unresponsive, arms slack by his sides not knowing how to act being thrown into a situation where he’d never been before and where he wishes that he knew how to stop Aziraphale collapsing within his arms and where he’d have a clue what’s going on.

Crowley would like to call the next minutes that pass silent. They’re not. There’s the muffled sobs that are mangled together with heavy breaths that weighs down Crowley’s shoulders, the not-quite-quiet note of stairwells and his own murmurs that he doesn’t remember. They’re not loud either, but they fuse into a noise that is muted but not mute, a radio being played next-door where you can hear the beat but not the melody. It’s fragile and weak, a porcelain plate that’s been glued together uncountable times and where the resemblance to the original isn’t there.

A human might refer to the situation feeling as if time had suddenly stopped, however, both Crowley and Aziraphale had paused time multiple times throughout their lives and when time had stopped, it was more akin to walking through Madame Tussauds than feeling as if you were thrown out of orbit, straight into space towards the nearest star. If said star could burn and kill you, which, for an immortal demon who had been the architect of constellations wasn’t something he worried about.

What he was worried about was Aziraphale, here in his arms who hadn’t uttered a word since he fell (quite literally) through the door and threw Crowley’s morning-evening-what-time-was-it upside down as he stands there, yellow eyes blinking at the wilted plant in the corner of the stairwell, waiting on Aziraphale to vanish if a single word was uttered.

He’s afraid that if his tongue slips, if a sound that isn’t the incomprehensible noise that he cannot prevent escapes his mouth, that’ll Aziraphale will vanish, and that it’ll turn from the dice being within Aziraphale’s hand to it rolling beneath the dusty drawers that are locked and labelled with ‘Aziraphale, do not open’ in his expansive imagination-world.

It’s not him that cuts through the silence.

“Oh, Crow-” He switches from staring into empty space to stare at the hollow wide open blue eyes that are glancing at him and then his neck, and then at the tear-stained collar of his t-shirt. 

“I’m so sor-” While Crowley wouldn’t find an apology unwanted, this wasn’t the apology that he wanted.

“Aziraphale, don’t be- don’t be sorry, please..”

“I-”

He grasps at Aziraphale’s shoulders, with desperate yet decisive hands, and he’s curious (he always is), and he can feel the tempting scent of finding out why Aziraphale had finally come here, but with tears running down his cheeks and a desperation that he hasn’t seen the apocalypse, but Crowley isn’t a flame that cannot be tamed. He doesn’t want to burn Aziraphale, not when he’s already stood in the ashes of a fire that did.

“Are you- are you okay?” He asks, with a voice that he doesn’t want to tremble, and a voice that he hopes is a ledge that Aziraphale can lean upon.

“What- what does it look like?” Crowley blinks, because he wasn’t prepared with the bitter undertones that taints the quiet words that he stutters through as he takes a short step backwards and lets out a laughter which is not a laughter, rather, it’s a light sound that’s weighed down by something that Crowley doesn’t want to attempt to identify. 

“Of course I’m not- I’m not-”

He’s not used with this. He’s somewhat used with dealing with people breaking down, but he’s not used with dealing with an angel doing the same. A demon wasn’t supposed to care or to support, yet, Crowley saw himself more as a snake than a demon, but Aziraphale wasn’t the kind of angel to show emotion outwards and he didn’t tend to come to Crowley when he needed a shoulder to cry on. It’s not unexpected that he’s lost, once again, but it appears that Aziraphale is equally lost.

“Ok- ok- let’s.. you want to sit down? You want a cup of tea? That’d be nice, yeah? Uh, maybe a napkin- I got wine but I don’t know if that would be sma-” 

“Tea would be nice.” 

Crowley is about to snap his fingers as he’s let go of Aziraphale and is on his way towards the kitchen, watching the angel out of the corner of his eye, but-

“Please, Crowley, no miracles. Not today.”

Normally, he’d retort back, but this is anything but a normal situation, so he doesn’t. Instead, he blinks with wide yellow eyes, nods somewhat loosely and walks towards the kitchen and then pauses when he remembers that he’s a demon with unlimited power and he doesn’t tend to have tea when it was just a snap away,

“Uh, angel, I- I don’t have a kettle.. or tea- if-”

“It’s fine.” It sounded like a generic statement, as if everything was fine, but mayhaps it was only the absence of tea that was fine. Even then, Aziraphale found himself thinking that a cup of green tea wouldn’t be wrong. To be fair, Aziraphale tended to think that a cup of green tea always was a good idea.

“Would-” He rubs his hand against his neck, adjusts the hem of his t-shirt as he watches with concern as Aziraphale sits, stiffly, within the equally stiff couch, remaining quiet, as if- as if he hadn’t been in Crowley’s arms minutes earlier, traces of his tears still damp against Crowley’s collarbones. “Do you want some chocolate?”

The memory of a couple of weeks ago in the chocolate shop hasn’t left him yet, but it just happens to be that he hasn’t had chocolate in the past two weeks and he is craving chocolate and isn’t chocolate one of those things that, well, that are meant to be consumed when your emotions have decided to rebel and riot and cause outright war, and, really, he just wanted chocolate and he’d keep coming up with excuses until he’d gotten them.

“Chocolates would be nice to share, wouldn’t they?”

It’s not alright, yet that doesn’t stop Crowley from opening the pantry and grabbing the slightly dusty box of chocolates, listen to the water rush out through the tap as he pours them two glasses of water, and waltz out to where Aziraphale has found a blanket and watches Crowley with emotions he wishes he could decipher. Oh, how he wishes.

Yet, this wasn’t the time to try to solve the puzzle, because he wasn’t sure he’d had all the pieces. Instead, he sits down beside the angel, and eventually, they talk.

* * *

They talked. They didn’t talk a lot. There were quiet murmurs and late-evening whispers as the fear of cutting the thin string that kept the temporary peace is just behind the tongue of all words that are spoken. It’s not a hollow conversation, with platitudes made out of glass that can be shattered with a single touch, yet, it’s not a balance that remains undisturbed. It’s a suspension bridge that’s been built up across centuries with thick and thin twine, where the boards are slowly deteriorating and where some of the rope is fraying, and it’s a desperate chase to find a replacement.

There’s Aziraphale that tries to keep himself together while he’s nibbling on chocolate, and tells what happened while his voice is a futile attempt of being okay, and where the torn words fall out on a quiet tongue, the threads that tied them together tear and wear.

There’s Crowley, mostly silent with exceptions of worried whispers and a hesitant hand that doesn’t quite end up touching Aziraphale’s shoulder for comfort and remains stuck in the limbo where the past has become erased and the future isn’t a path that can be foretold. He can’t say that he understands every single word or idea, but the pieces that he’s gathered fit in some of the gaps inside his head. It’s a one-to-million scale map where you know what place it is, but you cannot see the streets or buildings that gives the city life.

Aziraphale doesn’t go into detail on why he stormed into Crowley’s apartment with tear-stained eyes and a desperation that was rare from the angel. It’s a simple explanation, with layers upon layers that can be felt but not identified. It’s unsure if he doesn’t want to reveal every single detail that led to his fragmented state or if Aziraphale doesn’t know every single step that led him here, half-sitting in an uncomfortable couch, with a half-eaten box of chocolates and one half of the solution, that for once doesn’t have his eyes hidden behind those blasted sunglasses.

For once, the yellow eyes are open and Aziraphale finds himself agreeing with the common human saying that ‘eyes are a window to the soul’, and albeit, the concept humans had around what could be considered a ‘soul’ were mostly bizarre and silly in the eyes of an angel, but the intention was there. Aziraphale did find himself thinking that if Crowley had a soul in human-terms that it would probably be the part of him that was a snake, and so, for the demon the phrase ‘eyes are a window to the soul’ had a more literal meaning.

A rift had been crossed, when Aziraphale didn’t have to stare into his own reflection and when the sunglasses didn’t hide what was most ‘Crowley’ in the intangible sense. He knew that the demon wore them to not reveal, well, his ‘demoness’ but Aziraphale wasn’t a human. He wasn’t an angel, either. 

Now, his angelic status hadn’t been removed from him nor had he fallen. He was an angel in the sense that he possessed wings, a halo and the ability to manipulate the world with a single thought. He’d been an angel, back in the garden when he’d been untouched by humanity, and where he’d followed the words of heaven with a naivete that’d shifted into doubt shaped in the form of a demon with a fondness for humanity and a hidden want to do good.

A good demon had seemed like a childish and crazy joke (mayhaps, the kind of jokes that god was most fond of) until Crowley crawled, pun intended, under his skin and his world-view slowly toppled over until the last brick in the line of dominos had fallen.

His world-view had gotten thrown upside down once again, when the view of the world became awfully shortsighted and reality was put into question, and when his former employers were behind it, there weren’t a lot of options left than to resign.

Between the options of his former employers but in boils and blight, and his best friend / fellow traitor the decision wasn’t very hard. He hadn’t thought of it as a decision to begin with.

It was him and Crowley behind those damn sunglasses against.. or well, with, the world since it’d begun six-thousand years ago until it’d eventually end whenever god decided she’d had enough fun.

There was only one, or mayhaps a few or a dozen, issues. There didn’t exist a manual that explained what to do when you’d betrayed hell and heaven, settled down on earth with your foe turned to he-didn’t-know-what and decided to protect the planet and humanity. He was sure that there’d been a book or movie produced about his dilemma, humans tended to be so imaginative, but his own life wasn’t a fictional story but a reality most humans didn’t know existed.

It should be clear that Aziraphale wasn’t unhappy. Rather, he found himself being the opposite. That didn’t mean it was a perfect, fairytale ending where he and Crowley had ran away together to the end of the rainbow. They had run away from the rainbow, to where they wouldn’t be led to false treasures and following a false path, where they’d just end up back where they started.

Crowley seemed to thrive without the necessity to behave according to a mold he’d never fit into, but Crowley had always been reckless and steered off the path he was supposed to follow (both metaphorically and literally). The shackles that had tied the demon to hell had always been loose, meanwhile, Aziraphale’s shackles had always been locked tightly by free will and insistence that heaven was acting upon God’s words and not their own twisted plans.

He was sure that Crowley would scoff at him (without ill intent), with a slight smirk and raised brows that, for once, he wouldn’t remember with fondness, and tell him that he was ‘being silly, angel’ and that they were finally on their own, that these past six-thousand years had led up to what was meant to be ever since they’d met in the garden.

He wanted the two of them, side by side, as they watched the time pass by together instead of alone, forging a new path together. He just wasn’t ready yet.

The couch is either getting more comfortable or Aziraphale is just adapting to the world around him the longer he sits in the black-leather and steel contraption huddled in the tartan blanket that he was surprised that Crowley hadn’t gotten rid off. He’s close to the end of the short sentences and muddy mutterings of what happened before he’d showed up at Crowley’s, and he hopes, he hopes that Crowley understands enough as to not question Aziraphale because it was enough with himself and the world questioning him. There was a comfort to be had in the habits they’d built up, slowly, throughout the past six millenia. The occasional dinners and the occasional late nights of drinking and conversations had continued past the apocalypse. Of course, Aziraphale would have had to be utterly dense as not to notice the underlying tension and uncertainties that plagued them each and every time they met. 

Maybe sometimes change was a good thing, a voice within Aziraphale’s head whispers, a voice that happens to be himself arguing with himself. He’d use the ‘angel and demon on his shoulder’ metaphor, but he was an angel and there was only so far he could go play with the many interpretations of heaven and hell until he became tired of it.

Change would have to wait, and for now, they were here, in the apartment that didn’t have any character, and yet, somehow it felt like Crowley, the individual with the most character that Aziraphale had ever encountered.

* * *

Crowley listens. He listens as Aziraphale talks, and he listens when Aziraphale doesn’t talk. He speaks, as well, albeit the words are few and far between, but this isn’t his time to ask. 

He doesn’t ask when Aziraphale speaks of a young boy with a reckless spirit that’d run on the sidewalk in the outskirts of Soho, with a foolhardy attitude that got him pushed aside and thrown to the ground. He doesn’t ask as Aziraphale speaks with a muted tone and careful words, how he’d stood there, a wide-eyed bystander as if he was a human that couldn’t help and not an all-knowing angel that could fix almost any problem. He doesn’t ask why Aziraphale hadn’t used a miracle, why he’d helped the boy by the grasp of a hand, and why he hadn’t fought back when he got forced onto the ground, nor why he’d gotten so overwhelmed from the nearby cars and the ever-present non-caring gazes of Londoners.

Crowley understands the last part.

He doesn’t mention the fire ignited inside him, that’s growing faster and faster with every word that leaves Aziraphale’s mouth. He doesn’t mention the slow simmer of revenge that’s just below his skin, nor how he wants to hide Aziraphale away from the world, and he doesn’t mention how he wants to erase the thought of his angel (Aziraphale didn’t belong to anyone) from his head. 

There’s a lot of things that Crowley doesn’t do. There’s a few things that he does. He lets his eyes be uncovered and he lets them speak with what he doesn’t say, he eats a couple of the chocolates, hands Aziraphale the tartan blanket, and he waits. Waits until Aziraphale lets out a sigh, a sigh that’s heavy with what he’s just told Crowley, what he’s only alluded to and what he hasn’t mentioned at all. It’s a sigh that penetrates through Crowley’s skin, and one that adds to the many, many piles of evidence that makes it clear that everything wasn’t okay.

Restraint isn’t something that Crowley is very familiar with, but, it’s been his lack of friendship with it that’s led to the angel falling out of his grasp, and he doesn’t know if he’s been falling upwards or downwards.

Crowley might be reckless, but he wasn’t selfish.

He learned and adapted, and that wasn’t limited to the human world, it also included Aziraphale which could be classified as its own world. Planet Aziraphale. If he still possessed the ability to rewrite stars, he’d create a galaxy in the angel’s honor. Mayhaps an entire universe dedicated to him. A galaxy expanded, a universe never ended. 

While it’s clearer than the skies in Tadfield that Aziraphale only touches upon the small, puffy clouds of his problem and doesn’t mention the storm that’s been brewing for decades, the angel is a ticking time bomb and Crowley doesn’t know what’ll make it explode. Therefore, there’s more than a dozen (more than a baker’s dozen dozen) questions that remain unsaid, and stuffed into the real-estate in Crowley’s mind that’s becoming increasingly in demand and sky-rocketing in prices just like the rest of the urban market.

He wants to ask, but he also wants to grab Aziraphale’s hand, to hold him close, embrace him and tell him sweet lies on how he’ll never get hurt as long as I’m there to protect you, ask him softly if he wants to retire for the night, and wake up to Aziraphale reading in bed. He doesn’t do any of it. 

Instead, he remains quiet and nurses on his glass of water as he waits for Aziraphale to awaken the frail silence.

“Thanks for listening, my dear.”

“Angel, don’t thank me. It’s- it’s-”

“It’s what, hm?”

“I want to.” Crowley didn’t tend for those words to feel so potent with emotion he didn’t intend to speak. 

“You- you-, you want to?” Crowley loves Aziraphale. He loves how the angel can so easily be surprised, the wide-eyed expression he gets, and the way his face crinkles as he smiles so softly and tenderly. He does not love the way that Aziraphale isn’t expecting to be cared for, to be shown human.. well, demonic? angelic? common decency. He thought that he’d been clear enough in the past centuries that he cared, cared more than any other being (mayhaps other than how God cared about humanity in her own twisted way) had ever done about Aziraphale.

“Of course I want to, of course-” 

“You can’t be that dense. You can’t.”

“I-”

“No, Aziraphale, you must- you must know how much I-” Love you. That was the words that Crowley wanted to speak, and that was the words that Aziraphale wanted to hear.

“Care. How much I care.” Too bad that neither of them was getting what they wanted.

“Oh.”

“I care about you too, you know, my dear.”

* * *

Crowley puts the empty box of chocolates in the bin that he never uses, and puts the glasses, one half-full and one half-empty, onto the untouched counter beside the sink that he rarely uses, and Aziraphale, who's seated at one of the black and surprisingly comfortable bar stools across the counter in a poor imitation of Crowley’s lazy grace, as he watches with a half-fond and half-yearning gaze to the odd domesticity that had followed the previous hour. 

It’s a divergence from the past silence that was weighed down with heavy emotions and many, many words unspoken. It’s still quiet, but a quiet that speaks of a familiar routine and a quiet that speaks of tenderness between the angel and demon. It’s a fresh breath of air, one they’re both grateful for and one they both carve. What they’re both longing for, right in front of their eyes, and yet, none of them reaches for it in the fear that it’ll be taken away before they can properly savour it. 

Crowley isn’t happy, yet, he isn’t unhappy either. He’s feeling soft, an adjective that’s rarely used to describe the demon dressed in black and with limbs that’s almost all sharp edges. Though, now here, with a subdued smile and drowsy eyes, with his angel here in front of him an unknown-day evening, soft and tender is perfection as he for once isn’t waiting on venomous words to spill out of Aziraphale’s mouth and slowly fester themselves within his delicate body. 

Instead, he’s waiting on what comes next. 

“Well, I think.. I should be going, it’s getting quite, quite late and I should check up on the shop, in case anything happens.” This was the opposite of what Crowley wanted to come next. A sentence that was clearly an excuse, because nothing could happen to the book-shop as Crowley had made sure that if anyone or anything got the idea to even touch it, they’d regret it.

“Angel, there’s a good bottle of bourbon that I’ve been saving for an evening like this.”

“I- I don’t want to impose.” 

“Angel, angel, you’re not imposing.” Fervent words, and Crowley finds himself not caring about the clear desperation within his tone as he throws out a rope, determined for the angel to grasp onto it because he wasn’t going back to the limbo where he was lonely and close at the same time, waiting like a dog for Aziraphale to throw him a bone.

“Oh- I- You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure!”

“Oh.”

“I want you here. I want you-” Crowley might be opening up, but there were limits to the limitless. “I, uh, I want you to stay. Please.”

Aziraphale’s face is red, but there’s a cute smile and a playful twinkle in his eyes as he tilts his head towards Crowley, adjusting his bowtie and his smile widens more and Crowley can feel his heart slowly turning to mush, as if it already wasn’t mashed potatoes.

“Of course I want to stay, dear.”

“I was just-” He glances down at his hands, and Crowley waits, impatiently patient on the words that come next.

“I was nervous, I suppose. I came blustering through your door, and I didn’t even say hello. I thought, well, by the way you’ve been acting recently, that you, well, didn’t want me-”

“The way I’ve been acting recently?” It’s loaded with false accusations, and an amused tone that lends itself well to the ridiculousness of the past weeks. “You’re the one that’s been acting weird.”

Aziraphale splutters, albeit it’s not defensive nor surprised, as he leans backwards, raises both his brows and opens his mouth in a small ‘o’, and Crowley’s thrilled, over their playful banter combined with an honest discussion that isn’t clad in false lies and insecurities that weigh down on the thin bridge that keeps them together.

“I have been acting weird? You’re the one that wants to eat at restaurants without eating as you watch me- Oh.”

There’s dread that Crowley doesn’t see coming that slowly fills him at Aziraphale’s sudden realization. Did he- did he-

“You just wanted to spend time with me, didn’t you?” Phew. He’d gotten part of it, but not the part that was locked with a key that he had swallowed, not because he’d think it’d tear their relationship apart, but because it was embarrassing.

“Oh, my dear, I do apologize.”

“Don’t be sorry, Ange-”

“But Crowley, oh, well, it’s quite embarrassing now, but I thought you were, well, pitying me.”

“Pitying you?” He doesn’t laugh, but it’s impossible to not hear the amused and kind of offended tone within his voice. “Why would you think that?”

“You wouldn’t eat.”

“Nhh?” Crowley has to admit that he’s confused by that statement, even though it did make a lot of sense and Crowley can feel the evidence forming the whole picture inside his head.

“You know I don’t tend to enjoy eating, Aziraphale.”

“I do- it’s just-” Crowley also can’t help but admit he’s curious. Mayhaps not as curious as he’s been, but there’s still curiosity there. To be fair, Crowley is always curious. It’s been a part of him, ever since he fell and became the serpent who began curiosity to run amok amongst humans, thanks to a simple apple, which, six-thousand years later wasn’t very simple.

“I’ve been eating alone-” “Not alone, Crowley, but I’ve been the only one eating-” “Fine, most times.-” “And well, now, after the apocalypse, I expected us to be-”

“To enjoy things together.”

“Oh, angel.” Crowley didn’t see that coming. Yet, now, in hindsight, he realizes how stupid both he and Aziraphale has been. Two immortal beings that together become less competent than most humans, how odd.

“I’m sorry-”

“Is that the only word in your vocabulary?” It’s said with a mischievous grin and a quirked brow, and that makes it feel so much better.

* * *

They both wonder where to go next. In their thoughts it’s metaphorical, but, in reality, it turns out to be a lot more literal than intended.

It all begins (or ends, one can never be quite sure) the next morning, where Aziraphale is seated in the same couch with one of the few books (astronomy) that he’s found stashed around Crowley’s place, hidden behind potted plants and odd choices of decor, enjoying the warmth left-over from their agreement and understanding, and he can’t help but smile every few minutes, because, because, they might not be there yet, but they were getting there. Not that Aziraphale knew what ‘there’ entailed for them both.

It begins, properly, when Crowley comes sauntering out from his bedroom, in a rumpled t-shirt, pants and a pair of socks decorated with small snakes, with a glint in his eyes and an excited grin that can only mean one thing, and that thing means that Crowley has a plan. Aziraphale doesn’t know whether to be excited or terrified, but it’s hard to be terrified by a demon with mussed hair and snake socks who looks so happy that Aziraphale knows that whatever has popped up in Crowley’s imaginative and insane mind might be their ‘there’. 

“Let’s get away, angel.”

“Away?”

“You and me and the Bentley, out from the city, out of the country. Let's see the world. Let’s go on a road trip, angel. Let’s find- find whatever this” he gestures at them both with wild, manic hands, “is.”

And so, the next morning, they’re driving down the M2 towards ‘there’, wherever there might be.


	4. Chapter 4

Queen, thrown in with other music, most of which that Aziraphale would have to referred to as ‘bebop’, had been playing in the background ever since they left London. However, Aziraphale found himself enjoying the background-sound of what was so closely tied with Crowley. It made him feel less lonely, even though he wasn’t supposed to feel lonely in a car that was Crowley, just as much as the demon himself driving with a wild grin and a half-unbuttoned shirt down the sunny late-summer afternoon through places where they hadn’t been for centuries. 

Neither of them finds themselves paying attention the music that had become an indisputable part of the Bentley as they drive away from Calais, through the French countryside where the presence of the old beauty that is the Bentley draws curious eyes, but they don’t pause and continue onwards on the small roads framed in an idyllic painting of meadows with wildflowers adding sporadic colour to the endless sea of green and blue. They pass through clusters of lush trees that fleetingly transports them to a world long ago that remained untouched by human hands, but then pass by another worn-down stone house, and then through a small town with a lonely gas station and a small shop with half-run down ads for cheap deals on shampoo that’s been there for at least a year. 

They don’t stop, nor are they driving towards a certain direction. It’s drifting at a just-above-the-speed-limit pace. When they had arrived in France, it had been instinct for Crowley to press down on the pedal and speed down the roads that was sure to put others in danger, if he wasn’t a demon with reality-warping powers which made the world his own playground. However, in the car, there was only one speed demon, and that speed demon wasn’t the angel that tended to chide whenever the car flew instead of gliding through the streets with abandon. 

There was still a fickle balance between them that hadn’t been repaired yet, only put together with bandaids and duck-tape, the proper parts were still being found. While bandaids and duck-tape were surprisingly reliable, they weren’t reliable enough to support the heavy weight of another argument added onto the slowly-shrinking pile. This led to Crowley and Aziraphale coming to another arrangement, this one about how fast Crowley could drive the car and how loud Aziraphale could express his fear of ending up in a ditch.

They pass a beach, a beach where the sand can barely be seen and all that Aziraphale can spot is a sea of humans, most of which isn’t actually in the sea. The waves aren’t unpredictable as they slowly lap towards the shore, where a boat can be seen in the distance bobbing along with the rhythm of the water, letting it guide it where it’s supposed to be.

The shore quickly disappears from the view as they continue along the roads where asphalt is missing in a few places, and where weeds grow through the cracks. It’s not the kind of roads Aziraphale expected for Crowley to follow, he’d thought that the demon would have savored soaring down the motorway where there wouldn’t be any restrictions on how fast he could drive. Yet, instead, they had gone along a convoluted entanglement of country roads where there'd only be the occasional car passing by, and where their destination would be further out of reach. Aziraphale didn’t mind this, rather the opposite, he was surprised and pleased at their lackadaisical journey, however, even a slow ride like this, tended to have somewhere in mind when the path was decided.

The angel watches house after house pass by, and he listens to the words coming out of the radio, and there’s a light conversation between them both, an every-day exchange, one that Aziraphale might not remember but he savours the casual tone and the absence of strife waiting behind the corner.

They drive past a city, a city that Aziraphale could have found himself wanting to visit. Mayhaps somewhere to stay overnight, to dine at a new restaurant and to enjoy the late-evening sun by the sea with Crowley at his side. The first day of their trip deserved to be relished.

“Crowley, where are we going exactly? We didn’t decide upon a destination, did we?” Aziraphale interrupts the silence of the past few minutes, a silence that had ended after a conversation about the perfect temperature (Crowley preferred balmy heat, meanwhile, Aziraphale wasn’t opposed to cold winters with hot chocolate and knitted hats).

“Somewhere, and, no, we didn’t.” It’s a short response, and Crowley remains focused on the road, and if Aziraphale hadn’t been observing Crowley with an attentive eye, he wouldn’t have noticed the slight tightening of his grip on the steering wheel. Even without the shift in Crowley’s body language, from the fast-paced tone of his words it’s clear that everything isn’t fully sunshine-and-rainbows (even as the sky outside remains blue without clouds).

“My dear, what’s wrong now?”

Crowley remains silent for a while, as they drive down an almost-empty road and Aziraphale finds himself in a strange state between patience and impatience as they enter something akin to a limbo until Crowley decides to respond.

“I- hm. Ngk.”

For once, it’s Aziraphale that has to wait.

“Everything seemed fine before. Was it what I said?” A tone that’s kind, but not condescending. A tone that’s warm, but not weak. 

An inhuman sound (which, technically, anything that Crowley does is inhuman since he’s well, not human) escapes Crowley and he nods tightly, and it’s not clear if he doesn’t want to talk about it or if he simply doesn’t know what to say.

Although, it’s clear that they have to talk about it. Aziraphale wasn’t going back to what the past weeks had been a see-saw back and forth with their hearts bouncing back and forth, as if they couldn’t be equal in weight, and pushed back and forth until they’d both get tired of the constant loop.

This was a trip, it was a journey - and you couldn’t go somewhere without knowing where somewhere was.

“Do you-” There’s a lot of options of how to continue to be picked, he just doesn’t know which one is the four-leaf clover and which one is the bug that’ll give him an itchy finger for the rest of the day.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Yea- yeah. Yes.” That wasn’t what Aziraphale had expected. Yet, he wasn’t about to complain. Perhaps they were getting somewhere, even if their route was a fool’s errand.

“That’s good, dear.” He doesn’t say anything more. It’s not him that has words stuck behind a lock and is struggling to find the key, and it’s not him that possesses the knowledge that’s going on. This doesn’t mean he’s patient behind the calm smile and eyes filled with concern. However, the wrong move could end up with them back up at home, and not their home. An imitation of a home, where home was split into two without a bridge to cross.

Aziraphale is unsure if seconds, minutes or an entire quarter passes until Crowley speaks. He doesn’t find himself caring. They’ve got time, even if he wishes that the time would end up being a month rather than an additional six-thousand years. He doesn’t even know if God would have the patience to keep up with her game for that long.

“I-”

“What if it’s wrong?”

“It?”

“Uh, the destination. Where we are going. Where we’ll end up. What if- what if it’s-”

“Remember this is a road trip.”

“What? Angel, please don’t speak in riddles. I’m driving.” And he was, but barely.

“There’s plenty of stops on a road trip.”

“Oh.” 

Aziraphale smiles fondly at the demon, as he slows down and his tight grip on the wheel lessens as he chuckles, and Aziraphale can’t help but be satisfied at the step forwards.

“We’ve got time, dear.”

A comfortable silence settles in, and the silence is disrupted when Crowley, for once, knows what to ask of Aziraphale.

“So, angel, where do you want to go next?”

* * *

They sit on a bench. While sitting on a bench is a common hobby for them both, it tends to be the same bench in the same park in the same city in the same country, and not a small bench that barely fits them both by a river, where there’s boats, old and new, and where there’s unfamiliar people speaking an unfamiliar language that Aziraphale learned a bit of, and Crowley wasn’t bothered to learn anything beyond a few words.

It’s a particular view, with two non-humans: one dressed from top-to-toe in white and the other from toe-to-top in black, where they both don’t seem to fit in with the rest of the world, but fit together like two puzzle pieces from different puzzles that somehow manage to fit perfectly together.

It’s clear that they’re tourists, mayhaps from the way they’re speaking English, or mayhaps it’s from the way that they’re both not part of the city, akin to the boats in the river and the buildings that line the river. 

It’s a sunny late-summer day, so they’re not the only ones that doesn’t belong there. There’s a gaggle of youths with loud american accents, and there’s plenty of people walking around with their hands clutched around their phones, taking photos at everything from the lonely flower growing out of the cracks in the asphalt path, and the cranes that can be found along the river.

A lovely day in Rotterdam, where thousands of stories are being told, and two of these are being told on the bench, with the two oddly-dressed men (who aren’t really men) whose relationship isn’t clear, to the observer or to themselves.

“Oh, scroll up, yes, no, lower, ah, there- that looks lovely!” It’s a rare sight to see Aziraphale leaning over a smartphone (one that belongs to Crowley), and it’s an even rarer sight to see it with an excited expression and bright eyes that are clearly engaged at what’s being shown on screen.

There’s an odd feeling within Crowley’s chest, although, there tends to be a lot odd feelings within Crowley, from his toes to his head. This odd feeling has been here before, but it’s dressed differently, for once, it isn’t wearing a suit and bowtie but rather, dressed down with just a button-up and a pair of trousers. The odd feeling in question is Aziraphale, well, one of the many, many Aziraphale-branded feelings and emotions to be found within Crowley. 

This particular odd feeling exudes warmth and longing, the good and bad kind that fills you up until it’s spilling out, and tainting the rest of the non-Aziraphale branded merchandise. Crowley would akin it to what he expects hunger to feel, and right now, it’s the hunger that is slowly being fed but it doesn’t know when it’ll run out of food.

He didn’t expect it to happen here, beside Aziraphale on a bench that wasn’t theirs, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with the angel as he scrolls through Crowley’s phone with inexperience, clearly not used with using a smartphone yet modern technology to begin with. 

There’s a wide grin across the demon’s face, a wide grin that he wants to be there, because grinning means that he’s happy and happiness was always number two on Crowley’s wishlist. A demon who wanted to be happy, what a thought, but then also, he’s a demon in love with an angel, who is driving through Europe on a trip to find himself as if he’d just lost his job and was trying to live a little. Although, that was exactly what Crowley was doing.

If he was the one with the map, he wouldn’t have picked this somewhat-cosy city in the Netherlands to stop by. It was big and loud, and it was closer to London than not, and mayhaps, if he’d been the one who had planned the itinerary, they wouldn’t be on a bench with too-loud passerbys or in a city that doesn’t seem to want to stop to shout at him.

Aziraphale was the compass - who Crowley followed wherever he pointed, and in this case, the compass had led here, and here had Aziraphale, so he wouldn’t complain, in case he’d lose the compass and have to find north with the help of a star that he hadn’t created.

He hums lightly at the hotel which Aziraphale pointed at, and it looks nice. It doesn’t just look nice, it looks extravagant - clearly in the tastes of the angel. Tapping at it, he narrows his brows slightly and- ah.

“We can’t stay there, angel.”

“Oh, why not, dear? Don’t you like it? I am sure you can find something better-” Aziraphale had denied the past twenty hotels Crowley had suggested. He loved his angel, but Aziraphale was picky, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing (because somehow, Aziraphale had picked him, and that must mean he’s somewhat of good quality).

“It’s fully booked. No rooms left.”

Aziraphale tilts his head slightly, as if he’s questioning why that would be an issue, and Crowley is both endeared and disgruntled, because it was Aziraphale’s decision, one that he didn’t understand, that made it impossible to begin with. Crowley didn’t like not understanding. Not at all. He was the serpent of knowledge, and he’d eaten more than a few apples from that goddamn tree. He had grown the tree to begin with.

“It’d require a miracle to get a room there.” 

“Oh, right, sorry, dear. I’m sure we can find something nice.” Nice wasn’t enough for the angel. Seemed like he weren’t alone in disliking that word.

* * *

Aziraphale is seated on the edge of the bed, the only bed within the room. It’s a very, very comfortable bed. A big pillow to sink into, a pillow to drown within with a cherished book and a glass of wine. However, there was the fact that there was only a single bed which wasn’t an issue, because there was only one person within the room that would use it for its proper purpose and that person wasn’t Aziraphale.

Through a human lense, there was a certain implications behind a room shared between two people with only one bed. An implication that Aziraphale wasn’t sure if it applied to Crowley and him. It seemed unnecessary to look at it from the angle of humanity when they weren’t humans. Yet, it didn’t feel unnecessary. There weren’t an angelic or demonic eye to look through when it came to their relationship, it wasn’t even considered under celestial terms. 

They tended to approach problems through their own glasses. A pair of necessary sunglasses, and a pair of unnecessary reading glasses. This problem, if it could even be called a ‘problem’, however, wasn’t possible to see through their glasses as the ‘problem’ was what was behind the glasses.

Crowley is within the bathroom making himself ready, ready for what Aziraphale doesn’t know as they haven’t decided what to do this evening yet, beyond ‘dinner’ which was always to be expected when they were together. Aziraphale is waiting, but he doesn’t know if he’s waiting on Crowley or himself, but it's waiting that isn’t unpleasant, and rather, the kind of waiting that gives him time to ponder the questions that become more and more desperate for answers, answers that Aziraphale doesn’t know where to find, or if there even was answers to be found.

The reason that they had a room with one bed within it is that it was the only room available in the only hotel that they’d agreed upon (the only hotel that Aziraphale had wanted to stay within, mostly because of their decadent breakfast). Because, when Crowley had used the application on his phone to find a hotel (he still didn’t quite understand how it worked), the demon had checked for rooms available that had two beds. Aziraphale thought that he’d made it obvious that he didn’t sleep.

That didn’t seem to be the issue that Crowley had, though, as the demon had sputtered out nonsensical words and gone ahead and booked the available room without explaining his hesitations. Aziraphale had thought if he should ask why, but it seemed too large of a risk to chance at toppling the half-full glass of water that was slowly being filled.

Instead, he was here, on the edge of the source of the not-fully-a-problem, thinking. Thinking on what he’d missed, thinking if there had been anything written out in bold, red ink that he’d not noticed, busy with his own, many, many not-fully-problems. 

It wasn’t the bed itself that was the question nor the answer. It wasn’t a monster that would wake up and devour them both, and it wasn’t a non-human issue either that had made Crowley not booking a room with only one bed in it. 

Aziraphale was pretty sure that it was a human issue, however, a human issue where no humans were involved. Relationships tended to be as human as you could get, and while their own relationship weren’t very human, that meant that it fell somewhere in the middle, between humanity and whatever-they-were. Most of their dilemmas tended to land in the middle, between what they’d left and what they’d found.

The bed was a symbol of their relationship. A symbol that was very human. A symbol of love and commitment. A symbol that usually (but not always) represented romance.

Ah. It’s an almost audible thought, yet, Aziraphale doesn’t want Crowley walking in here asking why he was talking to himself.

The bed represented what they were and weren’t. Specifically, what they were according to human terms, and they became more human with every day that passed.

A question that they both asked in silence, “What is our side?”

* * *

Crowley’s dressed in black as he saunters out of the bathroom, his sunglasses pulled backwards, serving as a temporary solution to pull his growing curls backwards. He’s not just dressed in black, there’s shimmery specks of yellow across his button-up, which, at a closer glance forms the pattern of scales found on snakes. The shirt is a dramatic but sleek departure from his normal choice of wardrobe, and it’s accompanied by his usual skintight black jeans and a suit jacket that’s somewhere between tailored and over-sized. 

It’s not a look that Crowley usually sports, and now Aziraphale understands why Crowley said he would ‘get ready’ in the bathroom because even for Crowley who makes almost anything seem natural, this is clearly a look that’s meant to seem ‘effortless with effort’. 

It’s a good look. It’s a very good look. It’s clear it’s the wardrobe of a demon and not an angel, but Aziraphale can still somehow feel light excluding from it, and he finds himself drawn to it like a moth is drawn to a flame, and he wonders, he wonders if he gets too close he’ll burn up because looking was fine (made clear by Crowley’s constant staring during their dinners) but touching had always had a question mark scrawled upon it. 

However, it’s not the quite-not buttoned collar of the shirt or the smooth lilt of his hips that captures Aziraphale’s attention. It’s his eyes - full on display, and it’s impossible to not stare into them because this- this-

This was unexpected. The emotion that he’s quickly growing within him, the emotion he assumes is somewhere close to lust and desire but not quite so physical as humans made it out to be, and he wants to reach out, hold Crowley close to him and-

“You’re ready to leave, angel?” Ah. Time hadn’t stopped, and there was a conversation to be had while Aziraphale just wanted to watch and devour.

Angel. Angel. He wanted to hear that word murmured against his lips, wanted to hear it as they woke up together in the bed he was currently sitting on. Maybe there was something to this bed metaphor, after all.

“I- I don’t think I can accompany while you’re dressed like-” He gestures, with a loose hand, because there aren’t any words that he wants to mention right now that describes how he feels, “that, and I’m dressed like.. this.”

“I- I can change?”

No. No. Never. Absolutely not. Never.

“No, no, that’s not necessary, dear, I-”

“Well, uh, do you have another outfit packed?” Crowley asks amused (and that amused tone really makes his appearance that much better / worse), because Crowley knows that Aziraphale isn’t the kind of angel to enjoy change within his appearance.

“No, no, I don’t, but-”

He ends up leaving his jacket at home, two buttons unbuttoned, his waistcoat open in a style that Crowley had called ‘fashionable for this century’ and braces hanging loosely from his waist. 

Crowley really wants to see his angel dressed like this again.


	5. Chapter 5

The road trip continues. It continues through the Netherlands where they stay for a few days in what Crowley would call ‘the middle of nowhere’ and Aziraphale would call ‘a cosy village’ (which really, there were two to three houses, one of which was the bed & breakfast they had stayed at), onwards past the border to Germany, where Aziraphale decides he wants to get an updated ‘vacation wardrobe’ with thanks to Crowley’s many, many interventions turned out somewhere between stylish vintage and vintage which really, really didn’t work today. Aziraphale mayhaps be one of the few who can pull it off, and look handsome, but then again, Crowley was biased as he thought the angel clad in almost anything. 

They stop at a couple of villages, a couple of towns and a couple of cities within Germany, and the days turn into weeks, and the weeks had turned into a month by the time they reached Denmark, but even though they’ve travelled more than a thousand miles, they’d barely come ten miles on the metaphorical journey towards ‘there’ and Crowley, while driving and driving, wonders if they’ll get anywhere. 

They spend time together. They spend a lot of time together. Days, weeks, it’s rare they get an hour alone, and yet, the double beds remain a single bed, and conversations are flickering flames that barely contain warmth, but you’ll only scorch yourself if you accidentally touched them. 

Crowley wanted bonfires, he wanted flames that you could see from miles away. He wanted flames that filled you with warmth, warmth that could barely be contained, flames that are an artwork, a painting within the sky and a spectacle that couldn’t be looked away from. Those kind of flames tended to turn you into ash if you stepped too close, and with one wrong step, they could turn into wildfires and destroy everything they touched.

It was nice. It was quaint. Breakfasts shared together, sandwiches eaten in the Bentley while the rain poured down, and dinners that went late into the evening where, for once, the angel would loosen up and their dance wouldn’t be an awkward waltz but improvised steps and spins that would end with them both on the floor, laughing and grinning and their missteps and mistakes would be worth it, because they were here together.

Crowley didn’t like nice. He didn’t like quaint. It was the middle. It was barely-cold lemonade and days where the sun wouldn’t shine, but the rain wouldn’t fall. It was when time passed at a completely normal pace, when a minute felt like a minute and an hour felt like an hour.

It was nice, but nice wasn’t enough. Nice wasn’t what Crowley spent nights fake-sleeping yearning for. Nice wasn’t what Crowley felt when Aziraphale was laughing beside him as they drove down small roads, offering him snacks with the fond, just-smile that Crowley knew was there even if he was looking at the road in front of them. 

Nice was a four-letter word, a poor imitator of another four-letter word, a four-letter word that had seemed not very far away when they started, and now, and now it was past the horizon, and Crowley doesn’t know how long he can last.

He doesn’t know if he’ll ever become satisfied, and he wonders what happens when he starves.

* * *

Aziraphale missed the sea. He missed the waves that came and went as the tides passed, how the waves pushed and pulled against the moon, a tug-of-war between planetary bodies where there wasn’t a winner, but a back and forth that followed a familiar rhythm that they knew by heart. He missed the horizon in the distance, where nothing could be seen and where the world’s end and beginning seemed close by. He longed for the fragrance of salt and seaweed, the sensation of sand stuck between the toes and the cold feel of slippery cliffs beneath his feet.

It wasn’t clear why Aziraphale longed for the sea. It might be memories of old, it might be reminders of the present or a desire for what is to come.

What he was sure of, was that the sea and the tides was a constant in the ever-shifting world and it was a reminder that there still remained what god had created and humans hadn’t completely shaped the globe to be their own.

He watches it, glimpses through the clusters of trees, past the fields of short and long grass, and the charming houses beside the road that goes by Denmark’s coast. It appears and disappears, as if it doesn’t want him to get too comfortable, as if it wants him to second-guess. 

The glimpses are enough. He knows that it’s there, lurking behind the trees and buildings, waiting for the end that’ll never come. The sea is a certainty, the only certainty to be found within the car with the same song that always seemed to play when Aziraphale paid attention in the background, for the hour-long silence. The demon beside him, the demon with the sunglasses and the lackluster grasp on the steering wheel, with the disinterested gaze at the road in front of him, as if this (them) didn’t matter.

There are questions and answers, but they both refuse to acknowledge them

He rests his head against the window, and doesn’t want the last of his chocolate-covered almonds as he waits on the sea to appear.

“How long left?” He asks an unimportant question, for an answer that he doesn’t desire. 

“Til’ where?”

“To where we are going.”

“You know where we’re going, angel?” It’s a plain ‘angel’. An ‘angel’ that speaks of overuse and fatigue. He wishes it wasn’t grey. Sometimes, black or white was better than a muddled middle where you didn’t quite know what the shade was called.

“No.”

“Me either.” Two or three weeks earlier Aziraphale would have laughed. Now, he merely watches the waves lap at the sandy shore, wishing that their relationship was the same, steady rhythm that never changed. Instead, it was a storm where waves would fight until the sea drowned within itself.

“We have to stop somewhere.”

“Mmmm.”

He sighs, and he’s had enough.

“Crowley.”

“Wha’?”

“Stop being so- so-”

“What, angel?” The demon watches out of the corner of his eye, and Aziraphale can feel it, the layers upon layers of frustration and fatigue slowly toppling down, and he doesn’t even know if he wants to stop it.

“Frustrating. You keep- you keep-”

“Keep doing what?”

“It’s as if you don’t want to be here. As if- as if-”

“You’re right. I don’t want to be here.”

Aziraphale can feel the threads stretched thin, the threads that were already stretched beyond their limitations, from constant company with the demon. It was lukewarm tea. Warm, delicious at first, but when you put it aside, it slowly cools until you only drink it to be able to grab another cup. 

He can feel the cup of lukewarm tea spilling over.

“What do you mean? Here? With- with me?”

“Yes, no, ngk-”

“Crowley.”

“Please, please just shut up. We- we can talk later, yeah, angel? Please.”

Aziraphale shuts up. There’s not much else he can do as Crowley’s tone is a knife that cuts straight through the threads keeping them together.

* * *

He stares at the glass of wine tinted through his sunglasses. It’s a deep red. The colour doesn’t matter. The wine doesn’t matter. He’s not touched it, he’s ordered it as a routine. A routine that he wanted to shatter, see the wine spill out across his hands, a false imitation of the metaphorical blood he’d spilled.

He’d ruined it. Aziraphale had ruined it. Again, it didn’t matter who it was. It could have been God, that finally decided that she’d had enough of their arrangement and decided to tear it apart. 

"Du skræmmer altså vinen hvis du bliver ved med at stirre sådan på den"

He doesn’t expect to hear a voice that isn’t his own inner monologue that keeps going on repeat, even though he’s told it to stop multiple times this past minute alone. It’s being pushed from a ledge, and falling promptly back into the reality of the dimly lit pub, with the flickering neon lights and the shabby surface of the bar, and the just-barely-comfortable bar stool.

Danish hadn’t been one of the languages that he’d learned, and while he remembers vaguely how to speak old norse, there’s almost no reminiscence of it left. The tongue-in-cheek words take a few seconds to register, and the lady with the polka-dot shirt has almost left before he promptly turns his head towards her, reaching out with his hand within the air, as if he was grasping for a connection to Earth which wasn’t the glass of wine.

“Uh, sorry, I don’t speak Danish-”

The blonde looks a bit rattled as she blinks, not expecting to be reeled into a conversation with the strange man staring strangely at the glass of wine with such intensity that she wouldn’t have been surprised if it toppled over.

“You’re lucky I speak English then.” It’s an easy shift, as his new conversational partner rests against the bar, and raises a bushy brow towards the glass of wine.

“I was just saying if you keep staring at the wine like that,” she points at his eyes, that are vaguely visible through the lenses, albeit, not so much that she can tell that they’re yellow, “You’re going to scare it.”

“You thin’ the wine is scared of me?” An amused lilt in his tone, but she can tell there’s something not pleasant hiding beneath the whimsical surface.

“Maybe.”

“Wine can’t be scared, you kno’ that?” Wine couldn’t be scared, but Crowley had first-hand knowledge that grapes could be utterly terrified with one well-practiced glare.

“You’ve asked it?” She, with slightly drunken grace, sits down beside Crowley, looking with mischief at the glass of wine and the funny man beside her.

“No.”

“Then you don’t know if it’s scared!”

“If you’re so curious, uh, what was your name-”

“I never told you.” She raises another brow, and shakes her head, a bit confused, because this wasn’t the sort of conversations she tended to have at 11pm, half-drunk and high on the thrill of having gotten a promotion. “You don’t seem drunk enough to forget that.”

“I’m not drunk.” Could be that the man was lying, her best friend had told her multiple times that you couldn’t trust someone without looking into their eyes, but his glass was full, and the way he absent-mindedly stared into nowhere didn’t seem like a drunken stupor.. rather, it just seemed sad.

“I’m Ida.” She offers, with a slight smile that’s verging on being gentle.

“Anthony.” 

“Well, niice to meet you, Antho-” A giggle escapes her, “Anthony!”

Crowley thinks that he should be bothered with the tipsy girl beside him, who was too curious for her own good (yet, he couldn’t help but find that wonderful), and that crossed into his personal boundaries, but it’s nice.

Not the bad sort of nice, that’s the kind of nice associated with Aziraphale, but right now, here in a pub that he’d stumbled into, in a small Danish seaside town where there hadn’t been another establishment open this late, it’s the kind of nice that he finds himself carving, the kind of nice that was enough and not the kind of nice that made you long for more.

He doesn’t himself to expect to enjoy the silly conversation that follows, insignificant jokes and humorous quips that Ida probably won’t remember tomorrow, the playful kind of conversation where there isn’t a game of destiny being played. It might be trivial, but Crowley finds himself carving trivial when what’s been going between him and Aziraphale has been anything but.

It’s a weight that’s slowly being lifted, and oddly, it’s not thanks to the angel. 

How about that.

* * *

While it’s a bookshop, a bookshop that’s clearly old and well-loved, it doesn’t feel like his own bookshop does. Aziraphale has visited a lot of bookshops throughout his life, and no one is alike the next. If we ignore the lamentable existence of Waterstones and WHsmiths, which Aziraphale tended to do on a daily basis.

What the angel would consider bookshops were never alike the next. Some felt like a nest, a nest built up on stories and tales, a place of safety and comfort, where warmth and protection was to be expected. Some felt like a haunted house, filled with the unknown and the eerie, where you don’t know what’s waiting behind the corner. Some felt like a crypt, hidden far away where treasure would be hidden for only the brave and foolhardy to find and cherish.

Bookshops were like people, in that they came in all shapes and sizes, a container for humanity, knowledge and desires. However, unlike people, they tended to be harmless (with one notable exception that Aziraphale had encountered in 1899), and not watch at the fuddly man with bewilderment and nosiness, and they weren’t keen on engaging him in trivial conversations.

This bookshop was tiny. It wasn’t tiny in the overcrowded sense, where stacks of books could be found wherever you stepped, and where there was a possibility that you’d end up drowning in literature. It was tiny in the conventional way, where it was well-kept and tidy, where it simply was a small building with not a lot of space, and that space hadn’t been used to hoard, but to keep a carefully cultivated collection of well-loved books that couldn’t be found anywhere else.

It might not be his bookshop, but there was a feeling of home when he stepped in, the light-wooden floor creaking beneath his foot. He’d missed home on their journey to find it, yet, it only seemed to get further and further away, slipping out of hands. The book that was currently in his hands didn’t. It was a reliable presence, an idea of something substantial and stable, where the words were written and where they weren’t constantly smudged or where the pages were crinkled up, to try again, again and again.

He doesn’t understand what’s written in the book, beyond a few words, but that doesn’t matter. He’s not here to buy, he’s simply here to- Well, he doesn’t know why he is here. 

To get away, he supposes.

“You need help?” There’s a girl beside him, can’t be older than twenty, with chestnut braids and a freckled smile.

“Uh, no, thank you, dear. I’m just browsing.”

“You’re browsing books you can’t understand?”

“How do- wait, how did you know I didn’t speak Danish?”

“You don’t look like you belong here.” She says, and it’s stated in such a simple way that he doesn’t find himself questioning the knowledge that the girl had somehow had acquired.

“In the bookshop?” Because, Aziraphale liked to consider himself the kind of angel that fit in a bookshop. After all, he was the owner of a ‘bookshop’ (the term bookshop was used even though it served like the cave of a hoarding dragon.

“No, you look like the sort of man you’d find in a bookshop.” 

“I meant here, you don’t exactly seem like a tourist and I don’t recognize you from the village. No offence, but people don’t tend to show up here unless they’re on vacation.”

“Well, there where you're wrong, I’m on a vacation. Rather, a road trip.”  
She looks curious, a curious look that Aziraphale has seen plenty of times upon Crowley, and a look that sits heavily within his heart.

“I don’t tend to be wrong.” For someone else, the words might seem of disappointment, but from her, it’s stated as a fact.

“Well, humans, they tend to make mistakes.” Angels and demons, too. “I don’t think you’re an exception to that, my dear.”

“Hm.”

“Fair enough.” 

Trivial conversations. Trivial conversations that weren’t with his demon, and that didn’t make his heart want to burst into flames.

How about that.

* * *

There’s sand beneath their bare feet. It’s sand that shifts, unstable ground for unstable conversations. They walk in the silence of dawn, the sky tainting the sea with red as the waves lap onto shore, water finding itself into the crevices of their toes, as if it’s pushing them - either away, or luring them into it, deep below where they couldn’t breath. That was if they required breathing to begin with, it seemed like the ocean hadn’t gotten the memo that the two beings walking along it’s empty beaches were a demon and an angel.

It reminds them of the beginning of the world - where it was untouched by human hands, and when it was ruled by nature, where there wasn’t a constant war between humanity and the planet, a war without an end in sight.

Yet, there’s traces of humanity. Ice-cream wrappers left beside abandoned beach towels, and the footsteps that hadn’t been washed away yet. It wasn’t the beginning of the world, it was after the end of the world, and it wasn’t nature who was the queen of the world, and nor was god the god that shaped the path of her creation.

It had fallen into the hands of humans.

Crowley’s hair wanders. It’s almost at his shoulders, and it’s guided by the wind - unable to fight against nature. It whispers, tenderly, in the almost-morning, against the golden shine of the just-rising sun and the winds that hadn’t quite fallen asleep yet. 

It’s free, wild and unhinged.

It’s silent, silent of non-human words. It’s not silent, it never is. Silence is an illusion, made up by humans that didn’t listen and thought of the world as a background noise for their own adventures.

Not unlike how the angel and the demon saw humanity as their background noise, for their own journey forwards. A background noise that was becoming louder and louder, playing at the loudest volume and it couldn’t be ignored.

“It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Mmmm. It is.”

“Do you regret this?”

“Regret what?”

“This, us, just-” “Getting away, I suppose.”

“I- no, I don’t think so.”

“It’s been nice, hasn’t it?”

“I don’t want nice, angel.”

“What do you want then?”

“I- I- I don’t know.” 

It’s a sudden shift from ‘fake-quiet’ to loud, so loud that it over voiced the sound of sand beneath their feet, the sound of seagulls that couldn’t be seen, and the sounds of the waves that gets closer and closer, and back to ‘fake-quiet’ where they can hear the whispers of the wind, and feel it against their cheeks.

“What are we doing here, Crowley? Why- you- I don’t want to pretend anymore.”

“Me either. Wait, what are you pretending?”

“That everything is fine. It’s not. It’s nowhere close to fine, fine is further than the horizon, it’s- it’s-”

“Angel, breathe.”

He holds him close. It’s bitter-sweet and sweet-bitter, it’s going-off script and taking a step towards reality.

“Okay, okay, just- just- breathe.”

“I don’t need to breathe, we’re not human.”

“Aren’t we?”

“Huh, what do you mean-?”  
“We live on Earth. We’re on a road trip, for- someone’s sake. I don’t think any angels or demons tend to do that.”

“But-”

“We’re becoming more and more human. Why won’t you accept it?”

Crowley whispers it against his shoulder, it’s a warm tone but Aziraphale can feel the cold slowly settling in. 

“I don’t quite know what you mean, dear..”

“We’re just- we’re just going further and further away, aren’t we?”

“From what, Crowley?”

“From- from- us.” 

“Us?”

“Yeah, Aziraphale, us. Our side.”

He let’s go of the angel, and walks away.

“I- What is our side, though?”

“I don’t know! Angel, angel, I don’t know, so please, please, don’t ask me-”

“Crowley, it’s okay.”

“Is it, though?” 

Aziraphale closes his eyes. There’s not much else he can do than admit it.

“No, it’s not.”

Crowley feels Aziraphale grasp at his hand, and he doesn’t know if he wants to hold on or run away. If he wants to hang on, until he eventually falls, or fall when he can decide to jump.

It’s warm. It’s comfortable. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel like the hand is grasping at his heart, slowly ripping it through his chest, and he can’t stop it.

He clenches back.

Aziraphale looks into his eyes. He looks back. Throws his glasses into the sand, holds tightly onto Aziraphale as the hourglass cracks and the sand spills out, through their hands.

They both know that they’re not there yet, that they’re adrift and they’ve both thrown the maps into the sea. They both know that they’re not okay.

That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t feel like coming home without knowing quite where home is when they kiss. It’s soft and it’s hard. It’s nostalgic, a memory for where they both want to be, for a place that lies far away, a place that cannot be reached together. 

It’s the beginning after the end, and it’s the end of a new beginning.

* * *

The next morning Crowley drives away, alone.

* * *

They’re both lost. Lost on a path that diverges. A path that diverges, but that’ll become one, one that leads to a cottage by the sea. 

Aziraphale doesn’t know who he is. Crowley doesn’t know where he wants to be.

They both know that they’ll end up, together, side by side, watching the world from their bedroom window. They both know that day is coming, but it won’t be tomorrow and it might not be the next month, or the month after that.

Being human takes time. They have time, time that’ll never run out.

* * *

****

One month later

There’s rain outside the window. Rain that pours and pours. A sign that the summer is over, and autumn is here to take its place. It’s the kind of rain that’s pretty to watch, to listen to while it echoes against the roof. Aziraphale enjoys the warmth of his tea, letting the aroma of peach and peppermint slowly penetrate through the tender atmosphere of the coffee shop. He listens to the conversations beside him, in a language he’s only begun to understand, while he writes word after word, some would call it a biography and some would call it a diary.

It’s been a month since the walk on the beach. A month in which he’d ended up in a small town, and where he’d found a temporary room to stay within, and where he’d found a group of aspiring writers that met each Wednesday to tell stories.

Right now, he’s writing for himself. Writing down the words that he cannot speak, the words that cannot only remain thoughts.

He’ll sit there, for an hour or two, before he’ll walk by the shops and attempt to try to cook one of the recipes that Crowley had texted him, and then he’ll call the demon, each a step closer towards their destination.

Home.

* * *

It’s a garden, a garden without apple trees. It’s a small garden, a garden where vegetables are tenderly grown and the herbs are guarded by the demon with the red hair and black hat. 

Herbs that aren’t for himself, herbs that are gathered and packaged, and sold at the small market each weekend. Molly has told him a couple of times that he should show up, help her sell their small harvests that didn’t end up at her restaurant. He had said no, but he wonders, wonders as he browses through one of her many cookbooks, if he should say yes.

He finds a recipe for angel food cake, and he can’t help but grin as he takes a photo and sends it to his angel. One day, they’ll cook it together - with Crowley’s vegetables and with Aziraphale’s old recipes from centuries ago. That day isn’t today nor tomorrow, but it’s getting closer.

* * *

There’s a cottage by the sea, and it waits patiently. One day, perhaps in a few months or a year, the vines will shiver and quiver, there’ll be two well-loved chairs looking out into the sea on the veranda, and the apple tree won’t be there, and a couple of centuries later, the crow will have turned into the earth where the same hands are still tending to the unruly crops and the same books are still being read in the same chair, at the newly painted porch, looking onto the sea that never changes.

The cottage isn’t the end of their story.

It’s merely the beginning.

* * *

“Angel, I love you.”  
“And I love you, my dear.”

The furniture hasn’t arrived yet (they’re still doing this the human way), instead, there’s a tartan blanket spread across newly-replaced wooden floor, where an angel and demon is seated, a picnic in their new home, a picnic from their garden and from their kitchen.

They’ve got the rest of time.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, and thank you again [Wanderingsilvan](https://wanderingsilvan.tumblr.com/) for the wonderful art.


End file.
